The last person Israel executed was Adolf Eichmann, hanged in Jerusalem in 1962 for orchestrating the Holocaust. On Monday night, the Knesset voted to bring back the death penalty. The new law was written for Palestinians.

The “Penal Bill (Amendment — Death Penalty for Terrorists)” passed 62-48, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voting in favor. It mandates execution by hanging for Palestinians convicted in Israeli military courts of lethal attacks. Judges can impose the sentence by simple majority rather than unanimously. Avenues for appeal are extremely limited. Clemency is not provided for. The execution must be carried out within 90 days.

Jewish Israelis convicted of comparable crimes face no such penalty. The law’s civilian-court language restricts capital punishment to those who kill “with the intent of ending Israel’s existence” — a threshold that Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, told the Associated Press means “Jews will not be indicted under this law.”

Two Legal Systems, One Territory

Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954. Military courts in the occupied West Bank retained theoretical authority to impose it but never did.

That changes now. Palestinians in the West Bank, who live under Israeli military administration, face a mandatory death sentence for killings classified as terrorism. Life imprisonment is possible only when judges find unspecified “special reasons.” Israeli settlers in the same territory are tried in civilian courts under entirely different rules.

The military courts that will impose these sentences have an approximately 96 percent conviction rate, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — “based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.”

Ramallah-based lawyer Sahar Francis told Deutsche Welle the law reflects the direction Israel is heading. Under international humanitarian law, she said, “Israel has no right at all to implement the death penalty on occupied people in the occupied territories.”

Ben-Gvir’s Signature Issue

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the far-right Jewish Power party, made capital punishment for Palestinian militants a central campaign pledge and a coalition condition for supporting Netanyahu’s government. He wore a noose-shaped lapel pin throughout the legislative push. “Whoever chooses terror chooses death,” he declared in parliament.

Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement against Arabs and support for the Kach group, which appears on both Israeli and US terrorism blacklists. According to Israeli human rights NGO HaMoked, at least 94 Palestinians died in Israeli prison or military detention facilities between the start of the Gaza war and August 2025. Israeli rights groups including Physicians for Human Rights have reported a sharp increase in prisoner abuse during his tenure.

Opposition lawmaker Gilad Kariv accused the government of subordinating itself to what he called Ben-Gvir’s “miserable, crude, immoral and irrational — from a security perspective — election campaign.” Israel’s next national election is scheduled for October.

Allies Object

The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement before the vote describing the bill as “de facto discriminatory” and warning it risked “undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.” The four nations, all close Israeli allies, stressed their blanket opposition to capital punishment.

UN human rights experts in February urged Israel to withdraw the legislation, citing vague definitions of “terrorist” that could see the death penalty applied to “conduct that is not genuinely terrorist.” Amnesty International called it “another discriminatory tool in Israel’s system of apartheid.”

Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East director Adam Coogle said the bill’s combination of restricted appeals and a 90-day execution timeline means it aims “to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”

Within minutes of passage, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a Supreme Court petition calling the law “discriminatory by design.” A Knesset legal advisor had separately warned the bill contradicts international conventions by eliminating the right to seek clemency.

What Comes Next

The law takes effect within 30 days. It will not apply retroactively. A separate bill that would establish special military tribunals for alleged October 7 perpetrators — with its own capital punishment provisions — may still come before the Knesset.

The Supreme Court could yet strike the law down. Netanyahu’s coalition previously moved to weaken the judiciary, and a ruling against the death penalty statute would set up a direct clash between the courts and a government that has shown little patience for institutional constraints.

Israel now counts itself among the 54 countries that retain capital punishment. The global trend runs in the other direction.

Sources