Rights groups denounce Israeli legislation to expand death penalty for Palestinians

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - JERUSALEM — Human rights groups have condemned Israel’s passage of a law approving the use of the death penalty against Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks, calling the measure a violation of international law and inherently discriminatory.

The legislation, passed on Monday by Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, makes the death penalty by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who have been found guilty of killing Israelis.

The bill stipulates that residents in the West Bank who kill an Israeli “with the intent to negate the existence of the State of Israel” will be sentenced to death. The court will be authorized to impose life imprisonment instead of the death penalty based on “special reasons or circumstances.”

The bill calls for the Israel Prison Service to carry out executions by hanging within 90 days of sentencing, with no right to appeal.

The bill effectively establishes the death penalty as a punishment exclusively for Palestinians convicted of nationalistic crimes, while excluding nationalistic murders carried out by Jewish Israelis against Palestinians.

Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to military law, while Israeli settlers are subject to Israeli civilian law. The bill amends military court rules in the occupied West Bank, allowing judges to impose the death penalty without needing a unanimous decision.

The law will not apply to Hamas militants who participated in the October 7, 2023, attack, as the government is promoting a separate bill to establish a dedicated tribunal.

A coalition of human rights and civil society organizations in Israel condemned the bill as an “official stamp of approval on a policy of vengeance and racist violence against Palestinians.”

The law is particularly egregious as it “targets Palestinians while exempting Israelis,” the coalition said.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society decried the bill, saying in a statement that it constitutes “a historic escalation — a new phase of openly sanctioned, politically motivated executions of Palestinian prisoners.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the legislation as a “dangerous escalation”.
In a social media post, the ministry stressed that “Israel has no sovereignty over Palestinian land” in the occupied territory.

“This law once again reveals the nature of the Israeli colonial system, which seeks to legitimise extrajudicial killing under legislative cover,” it said.

Hamas slammed the passage of the death penalty law as a “dangerous precedent that threatens the lives” of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

“This decision reaffirms the [Israeli] occupation and its leaders’ contempt for international law and their disregard for all humanitarian norms and conventions,” Hamas said in a statement.

The group called on the international community, including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to take immediate action to protect Palestinian prisoners from Israel’s “brutality”.

Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian National Initiative secretary-general, warned of the “seriousness” of the legislation, which he said would target Palestinian political prisoners and activists.

In a post on X, he also said that “proposing such an unjust and inhuman law reflects the depth of the fascist shift within the Israeli system, amid the international community’s failure to impose punitive measures against it”.

The bill is already facing a legal challenge. Immediately after the vote, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice to reject the bill. Opposition members and critics believe the bill is likely to be struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

The bill, championed by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, passed its second and third reading by 62 votes to 48, with one abstention.

Ben Gvir, who brought a champagne bottle into the Israeli parliament to celebrate, had previously threatened to withdraw his party from Israel’s coalition government if the bill was not put to a vote.

“Israel is changing the rules of the game today: Whoever murders Jews will not continue to breathe and enjoy prison conditions,” Ben Gvir said upon approval of the bill.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously opposed the bill, citing concerns over potential retaliation against Israeli hostages held in Gaza. However, he reversed his stance following the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire, allowed the bill to move forward and supported it in the final vote.

Israel currently allows the death penalty only in exceptional cases, including for crimes such as treason and war crimes committed under the Nazi regime, but it has not carried out an execution for decades.

Only two people have ever been executed in Israel since the creation of the state. One was an Israeli army officer executed for treason in 1948, and the second was Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust, who was hanged in 1962 after he famously was captured by Israeli intelligence agents in Argentina and was subsequently convicted in a landmark trial in Israel.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid slammed the bill in the Knesset, calling it “a surrender to Hamas.”

Ahead of the vote, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom urged Israeli lawmakers to abandon the legislation, expressing “deep concern” about what they described as the discriminatory character of the bill. “The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles,” the four foreign ministers said Sunday in a joint statement.

The UN Human Rights Office in Palestine called on Israel to “immediately repeal the discriminatory death penalty law”, noting that the measure violates the country’s obligations under international law.

Amnesty International called on the Israeli authorities to repeal the law, which it described as “a public display of cruelty, discrimination and utter contempt for human rights”.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, noted that the law’s passage comes just weeks after Israel dropped all charges against soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee.

“For years, we have seen an alarming pattern of apparent extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings of Palestinians – with the perpetrators also enjoying near-total impunity,” Guevara-Rosas said in a statement.
“This new law which allows for state-sanctioned executions is a culmination of such policies.”

Alain Berset, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, denounced the law’s passage as a “serious regression”.
“The death penalty is a legal anachronism incompatible with contemporary human rights standards. Moreover, any application of the death penalty that could be characterised as discriminatory is unacceptable in a state governed by the rule of law,” Berset said in a statement.

He also noted that Israel is a party to several Council of Europe conventions and participates in several cooperation mechanisms.

“In this context, the Council of Europe will closely monitor upcoming developments regarding this law. It will examine its implications for the Council of Europe conventions to which Israel is a party, as well as for the cooperation mechanisms in which this state participates,” Berset said.

The United Nations has previously condemned Israel’s military courts in the West Bank, saying that “Palestinians’ right to due process guarantees have been violated” for decades. The UN denounced “the lack of fair trial in the occupied West Bank.” — Agencies