The Israeli Knesset is fast-tracking one of the most extreme pieces of legislation in the country’s history. The bill — formally titled the Penal Law (Amendment – Death Penalty for Terrorists), 2025 — would introduce capital punishment in a manner that overwhelmingly targets Palestinians. Israel abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes in 1954, with the last execution dating back to 1962. If passed, this law would shatter that six-decade precedent and, according to human rights groups, create a racially stratified system of capital punishment with no parallel in modern democratic states.
The bill was not born from a vacuum. The legislation was proposed by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) party and served as one of the political bargains that cemented Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in late 2022. The Knesset approved it in a first reading by a vote of 39 in favor and 16 against out of 120 members. Ben-Gvir has since turned the issue into a personal crusade, filming himself inside Ofer Prison while demanding executions, and wearing a yellow noose-shaped pin in the Knesset chamber.
A Two-Track Legal System
What makes the proposed law so alarming for rights organizations is its dual structure. In the occupied West Bank, the death penalty would be imposed by military courts under military law for terrorist acts causing death, even if not intended. In Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, it would apply under civilian law but only for the intentional killing of Israeli citizens or residents. The practical result is stark: the bill mandates the death sentence for Palestinians convicted of acts of terror that result in murder, but leaves room for Israeli citizens convicted of the same crime to be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Once a detainee has been officially accused, execution would take place within 90 days, carried out by the Israel Prison Service. The latest draft also abolishes the requirement for a unanimous judicial decision, replacing it with a simple majority of panel judges. There would be no right of appeal, and military commanders in the area could not mitigate or cancel sentences. Palestinian human rights groups warn that the bill’s “most alarming aspect” is the possibility that it could be applied retroactively, paving the way for collective death sentences targeting hundreds of Palestinians currently held in detention.
Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the Israeli Prison Service has already embarked on logistical preparations to implement the law, outlining plans for a dedicated execution facility and staff training. The bill is currently being debated in the Knesset’s National Security Committee before heading to a second and third reading.
International Condemnation, Limited Action
The global response has been vocal in language but anemic in action. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk urged the Israeli authorities to drop the plans, saying the proposals “fly in the face of international law on several levels”. UN experts expressed concern that the two-track system would apply the death penalty in a discriminatory manner, noting that “only Palestinians in the West Bank, not Israeli settlers, are subject to wider criminal liability, military law and military courts”. The experts pointed out that the International Court of Justice has already found certain Israeli restrictions in the occupied territory constitute racial segregation and apartheid.
Amnesty International has been equally blunt. “With these bills, the Israeli government is brazenly granting itself carte blanche to impose death sentences on Palestinians,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, the organization’s Senior Director for Research. Any death sentences imposed under these amendments would, in Amnesty’s view, constitute a violation of the right to life and, when imposed by a military court, may amount to war crimes.
The Fourth Geneva Convention sets strict limits on when an occupying power may impose capital punishment on a protected population. Death sentences are permissible only in cases of espionage, serious sabotage against military installations, or intentional offences causing death — provided such offences were punishable by death under the law of the occupied territory before the occupation began. Since no Palestinian legal code carried the death penalty for these offences before 1967, legal scholars argue the bill stands on no lawful foundation.
A Pattern of Abuse Behind Bars
The legislation arrives against a grim backdrop inside Israeli prisons. At least 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons and military detention centers since October 7, 2023, in many cases seemingly as a direct result of torture, medical neglect, and food deprivation by soldiers and prison officers, according to data obtained by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel. Of those detained from Gaza, who make up the majority, less than one-third were classified by the Israeli army itself as militants.
Some 10,300 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, a figure that does not include thousands of detainees from Gaza held in military camps under conditions of enforced disappearance. The UN has documented systematic torture including “repeated beatings, waterboarding, stress positions, the use of rape and other sexual and gender-based violence and the imposition of deliberately inhumane conditions such as starvation”. The International Committee of the Red Cross remains barred from inspecting facilities.
For thousands of Palestinian families, the death penalty bill represents a terrifying escalation of a system that has already killed their relatives in custody without consequence. The bill’s critics — spanning UN agencies, international rights groups, and even some Israeli legal experts — agree on one point: if passed, it would institutionalize violations of the non-derogable right to life and constitute a form of racial discrimination. Whether condemnation alone can halt legislation that now enjoys broad Knesset support remains the central, unanswered question.
Original analysis inspired by Mohamad Alqeeq from Al Jazeera. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
