65 were unable to provide him with security. No death cases were recorded with this background in 2010 in the Gaza Strip.65 3 – The Death Penalty in the PNA Areas There has been no positive development mentioned regarding the death penalty in Palestine in 2010. Laws still impose the death penalty for many offenses, and courts continue to apply the death penalty. This is particularly so in the Gaza Strip, whose courts monopolized all death penalties issued during this year. The worst occurred at the level of this punishment this year when the Government in the Gaza Strip implemented five death sentences, even though they were not ratified by the Palestinian President. A‐ The Legal Aspect of the Death Penalty On the national political level, due to the disruption of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the PNA did not adopt any legislation aimed at reducing the offenses which are punishable by death within its punitive legal system. However, the Government in the West Bank began in 2010 and in cooperation with ICHR and the Palestinian civil society organizations to prepare a modern draft penal code in accordance with modern criminal policy to abolish the death penalty and hard labor, and replace them with penalties forbidding liberty. ICHR considers this initiative a positive step in the right direction towards abolishing death penalty, although it has not yet reached the level of legislation. In the Gaza Strip, the Government expanded the scope of criminal acts of death. In 2009, it ratified the decision to abolish the Israeli military provisions, which criminalize acts of drug trafficking with simple sentences, and adopted in lieu the Egyptian legal provisions in this regard contained in the Egyptian law no. (19) of 1962, which imposes severe penalties on drug trafficking up to a maximum of death penalty. ICHR intensified its efforts during 2010 towards the abolition of the death penalty, and sought to suspend it by asking the Palestinian President to issue an official decree to suspend the death penalty until the relevant Palestinian 65 ICHR recorded (3) deaths in prisons and detention centers in the West Bank in 2009, while it recorded (9) cases in the Gaza Strip during the same year. For more information, see the fifteenth annual report of ICHR for the year 2009.