Tel Aviv, Israel —
The Israeli parliament finalized a controversial bill Monday that would effectively expand the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism and nationalistic murders — a cornerstone issue for the country’s far right for over a decade.
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, drawing an outcry from human rights organizations.
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, massacre, as the government is promoting a separate bill to establish a dedicated tribunal.
Denunciations and a legal challenge
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 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.” He added: “We are not like Hamas; we are exactly the opposite of Hamas. We did not establish a Jewish state to adopt the moral standards of radical Islam. This law says: If they come to murder us, the only solution is to be like the murderers. To act like them, think like them, become them.”
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 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.”
