Hend Salama Abo Helow
Truthout / April 17, 2026
On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, new death penalty law exacerbates a painful reality for those with imprisoned loved ones.
On March 30, 2026, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, wearing a golden noose-shaped pin, popped a bottle of champagne as he toasted the Israeli Knesset’s enactment of a bill making the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of “terrorist attacks,” under the pretext of “negating the existence of the State of Israel.”
The bill — which passed with 62 votes in favour, 47 against, and one absence — mandates execution by hanging to be carried out within 90 days of a prisoner’s conviction in Israel’s military courts. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem points out that these courts have a 96 percent conviction rate for Palestinians. Conversely, Israeli Jews convicted of the same offenses against Palestinians are tried in civil courts, facing prison sentences at most — or even acquittal.
Enshrining this difference in sentencing into law is yet another form of national ethnic discrimination, where two populations — occupier and occupied — on the same land are subjected to starkly different judicial systems: civil and military. This constitutes a flagrant violation of Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserts that “all are equal before the law.”
Mohammad Diab, a foremost Gazan political expert, writer, and lecturer at the journalism department of Al-Quds Open University, further emphasizes that it is illegal for an occupying power to impose new domestic laws on occupied territories under international law.
However, this legislation is not just a symptom of the latest neck-breaking escalations unfolding in Palestine. Rather, it is inherited within a longstanding legal framework dating back to the British Mandate for Palestine.
Reflecting on the recent ruling, Hekmat Yusuf, a 43-year-old journalist and political writer, told Truthout: “History bears witness to undeniable methods of arbitrary killing.” During the large Palestinian uprising of 1936-1939, Yusuf pointed out, the British Mandate for Palestine “used executions of Palestinians as a tool of deterrence — much like the Israelis justify this law today for deterring Palestinians.”
“The comparison here is not for the method, but about the very philosophy that is controlling it all. Forcing maximal judicial charges and penalties becomes part of subjugating and punishing Palestinians,” Yusuf added. “From this viewpoint, the oppressor may change, but the pattern remains the same, and Palestinians are the only ones paying the highest price.”
The past century has seen a global trend toward abolition of the death penalty and preserving the right to life as enshrined in the Geneva Conventions. According to Amnesty International, a total of 142 countries had done away with the death penalty in law or in practice by 2017.
In Israel, the last execution carried out for a non-Palestinian was back in 1962. Meanwhile, the killing of Palestinians has never ceased. Now, it has been institutionalized.
Beyond the thousands of lives claimed during two years of genocide, more than 9,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since 2023. They have experienced harrowing torture; solitary confinement; sexual abuse; denial of blankets, food, and potable water; and the neglect of appropriate medical care in Israel’s notorious prisons. At least 88 detainees have passed away as a result.
“The Israeli death penalty law is not a fleeting detail in political interests,” Diab told Truthout. “It reflects a dangerous juncture and egregious intentions embedded in the mindset and scaffolding of Israel’s political order, and in the vision of right-wing extremists toward Palestinians and their resistance for freedom.”
“In its current form, the law has severely curbed the capacity of military courts to intervene — whether by mitigating the punishment, delaying its implementation, or granting retrials,” Diab added. “This law is being intertwined with the counterterrorism law, while clearly making exceptions for Jewish settlers who carry out killings as a way of existence.”
“This may open a narrow legal gap for the High Court — either to strike down the law or suspend its implementation,” he noted.
The Israeli right has long been pursuing this law. It was first proposed in 2017, and again in 2022. In 2023, Ben-Gvir, the head of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power Party), stipulated moving the law forward as a condition for the party to join Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
“Palestinian blood has become the bargaining chip used to settle Israeli political demands.”
“The context of this law lies in fulfilling political coalition demands with the far right,” Diab explained. “Palestinian blood has become the bargaining chip used to settle Israeli political demands.”
“Israel took advantage of a world preoccupied with the chaos in the Middle East to lay this law bare and formalize it,” Yusuf said. “What is worth noting is that what was once impossible to declare publicly is now being made possible with a green light.”
“We are witnessing a political colonial whiplash in history,” he added.
Even the language itself is biased, carefully worded to serve one group over another. Israelis held by Hamas are consistently described as “hostages,” while Palestinians who are arbitrarily detained are labelled as “prisoners,” as though they carry the culpability.
For Naji Aljafarawi — a former detainee released on the very day his brother, the fearless journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, was killed at the hands of Israeli-supported gangs — the meaning of freedom crumbled the moment he learned of his brother’s death.
“There is no unalloyed joy here in Gaza,” he said in distress.
“I was not surprised that Israeli forces legalized the execution law,” Aljafarawi told Truthout. “This is a vicious, bloodthirsty, and tyrant enemy.”
He spent almost two years in Israeli detention, enduring harrowing conditions. “Back then, we believed that death was more merciful than staying alive and being tortured by renewed methods each day,” Aljafarawi recalled of his time in prison. “They told us, ‘We won’t allow you to die so easily. We won’t grant you that luxury. Death is mercy for you. We will push you to the brink — then pull you back.’”
“In addition to the physical torture, it becomes a sadistic psychological game,” he explained. “I myself was left suffering, desperate for adequate medical care. It was only when I fell into a coma — when I was dying — that they finally admitted me to the hospital.”
Ja’farawi cannot grasp this law, nor reconcile with it. He went on, voice breaking, “I broke down into tears for days, thinking of my peers still there — dreaming day and night of the moment of freedom, the day of reunion with their families, the day they could finally embrace the land of Gaza.”
Aljafarawi put it in a nutshell: “Hope — that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that freedom will eventually come — is the oxygen keeping them alive.” He paused, then added in a trembling voice, “And for their families, hope is the soul that sustains them. But now, hope itself is being executed.”
Ola Jouher is the wife of Jihad Abu Mrahil, who has been held for nine months so far, and a mother to three children: Muhammad, who passed away at the age of one month; Jannah, who was killed after inhaling toxic gas during the genocide; and Sham, now a year-and-a-half old. “My husband was arrested at the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point, along with five others, when he ventured out — like many others — to bring us food, as starvation grinds on,” she told Truthout.
Jouher lost her home earlier in the genocide and has been displaced countless times; the absence of her husband has left a lingering wound and an overwhelming responsibility. “My daughter knows her father only through his picture on the screen,” she lamented. “She is always asking, ‘Is this my father? Where is he now?’”
In a trembling voice, Jouher continued: “Being alone — [acting as] both a father and a mother to a young child — amid genocide, the outbreak of diseases, and famine is extremely challenging. But I try to keep her afloat.”
Jouher’s search for her husband began when she reached out to prisoner support and human rights associations, and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, to figure out whether he was detained or had been killed by Israeli forces.
“They told me that my husband Jihad was taken through a torture trajectory — first admitted to Sde Teiman prison, then moved to Ashkelon prison, then to Al-Naqab prison — all of them notorious,” she recalled. “Each time I hear the dispatches from ex-detainees about these prisons, I can’t close my eyes for days, out of shock and worry for my husband.”
Jouher used to keep her husband updated about their daughter’s growth, her milestones, her worries, and her daily struggles. “I used to write to him on the canvas of the tent wall, crying, lamenting, complaining, and talking as if he were there.” She paused, then in a broken voice said, “Jihad is my soul, and when I lost him, I lost my soul.”
Finally, Jouher got in touch with the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, which tried to assign a lawyer to her husband, but could not. Still, she managed to send him a message: “Your wife and your daughter are alive.”
“The lawyer told me that Jihad had been informed that his family in Gaza was killed, and when he knew the truth, he could not have been happier,” she recalled. “He asked about Sham — whether she had started walking and talking.”
Jouher shared her perspective on the death penalty law without hesitation, saying, “I cannot convince myself of it — perhaps I would not even try. I have a strong yaqin — a deep belief — that God does not leave us alone, neither them nor their families.”
This law must not come into effect. Hope must not be executed.
“Just days ago, I went to the market to buy him clothes and the things he likes, so that when he is released, he would find everything carefully prepared,” she added, with quiet optimism. “I believe, deep down, that he will be freed.”
Jouher ended by calling on the world to shift attention to Palestinian prisoners, to raise their voices and advocate for their unalienable right to live.
Many international human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, along with foreign governments like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy, in addition to the Palestinian Authority, have called for the Israeli bill to be repealed, decrying it as a brutal, racist law. Yet both Yusuf and Diab raise concerns that this law might be the preface to further Israeli violations — more grave and more belligerent.
Today, April 17, is Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, when Palestinians commemorate the legacy of those detained in Israeli prisons and strive for their freedom. This year, the new Israeli death penalty weighs especially heavily on the Palestinian community as we fight for the freedom of our loved ones behind bars.
This law must not come into effect. Hope must not be executed.
Hend Salama Abo Helow is a researcher, writer and medical student at Al-Azhar University in Gaza
