Sawsan Zaher
New Lines Magazine / April 1, 2026
On March 31, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed a law that mandates the death penalty for both Palestinian residents of the West Bank, which has been under military occupation since 1967, and Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel, where they make up 20% of the population. The law explicitly excludes Jewish settlers residing in the West Bank; the prescribed method of execution is hanging.
Of the 120 members of the Knesset, 62 voted in favour of the bill, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The supporters included members of the opposition. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the passage of the law, while other members of far-right nationalist parties were heard chanting a traditional blessing of thanksgiving.
In the West Bank, Palestinians are tried in military courts, where the conviction rate is above 99%. The new law amends the Israeli Military Order to mandate the death penalty if the accused is convicted of “causing death with intent, where the act is an act of terrorism defined in the Counterterrorism Law.” In Israel, where Palestinian citizens make up around 20% of the population, the criminal code has been amended to mandate the death penalty for persons convicted of “causing death with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel.” While in theory the vague wording of this motive could apply to all citizens, in practice it refers only to Palestinian citizens.
Israel abolished the death penalty in 1954, making an exception only for Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi convicted in 1961 for his role in organizing and executing the genocide of the Jews in Europe during World War II. Now it has not only passed a law mandating capital punishment, but one that decrees that it applies only to Palestinians. Israel describes itself as a democracy, but has codified two separate criminal paths that are based on the nationality and ethnicity of the convicted person.
The law explicitly blocks any possibility of pardon or commutation of the sentence by the military commander, and orders the execution to be carried out on an expedited schedule of only 90 days. In effect, the law is a technical machine of vengeance producing a “fast track” to the gallows, while carrying a substantial risk of irreversible wrongful convictions within a system where due process is already fundamentally in doubt.
The Israeli army’s practice of killing Palestinians in the field is not new. There are many documented incidents of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank having been executed extrajudicially by the military and by civilian Jewish settlers, who almost never suffer any legal punishment. One recent incident occurred on Feb. 4, 2026, in the town of Qabatiya, where an Israeli shot Rayan Saba’ana, an unarmed 16-year-old, in the back at close range while he was walking on the street. Video documentation from the scene shows that the boy posed no threat, but the army prevented medics from treating him, and he died. No soldier has been arrested for this act, no criminal investigation has been opened, and the army still refuses to release the body for burial.
The new law is also an expression of permanent Israeli sovereignty over what is, according to international law, temporarily occupied territory, as well as the codification of a two-tiered legal system that mandates punishment based on ethnicity.
The concept underlying the new law can also be seen as an extension of the controversial 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which constitutionally defines the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians. It defines the State of Israel as having been established in the greater Land of Israel (as described in the Hebrew Bible) as the homeland of the Jewish people, and exclusively grants them the right of self-determination while excluding Palestinians. It thus legitimizes supremacy of Jews in Israel. The new death penalty law is the practical and lethal translation of that supremacy.
All the measures implemented by Israel over decades as an occupying power, including extrajudicial killings of Palestinians — the establishment of illegal settlements, extensive administrative detentions, systematic home demolitions, forced displacement of communities, mass incarceration and violent suppression — all pale in comparison to this new law, because it operates as an assertion of sovereignty and a formal codification of the decision over who may live and who must die.
The capital punishment law for Palestinians should also be understood as a continuation of the genocide Israel committed in Gaza after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Both the new law and the genocide are fuelled by Israel’s systematic dehumanization of Palestinians, which served as the primary trigger for the mass destruction in Gaza. By codifying the death penalty for a specific ethnic group, the state moves from military elimination in the field to judicial elimination in the courtroom. It transforms the logic of genocide into a formal legal procedure, granting the sovereign power the “legal” authority to terminate the lives of those it has already stripped of their humanity.
The response from Europe has been muted. In a statement published on March 24, the EU described the death penalty as “deeply concerning” and noted that it “opposes capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances.”
Europe (and most states worldwide) has a history of failing to censure, sanction or hold Israel accountable when it violates international law. It did not issue an effective statement when renowned human rights lawyers and genocide experts said that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, nor when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in July 2024 that the occupation and settlements were illegal and must be terminated immediately. Europe did not sanction Israel over its failure to act on the ICJ’s 2024 ruling, issued after South Africa v. Israel, to prevent and punish all measures that violated the Genocide Convention. Nor did Europe act effectively to implement the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over the years, Israel has interpreted this silence as permission to ignore U.N. institutions and international courts.
Without the establishment of unique judicial instances — tribunals that will examine not only the crimes but also the failures of the international community — justice for Palestinian victims will remain a hollow declaration, while the sovereign’s hanging machine continues to operate unhindered.
Sawsan Zaher is a Palestinian human rights lawyer based in Haifa
