On March 30th, 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a bill expanding the use of the death penalty. Its stated purpose is security; its practical effect, as the wording makes plain, will be to accelerate the execution of Palestinians. Human Rights Watch, which opposes capital punishment in all circumstances, called it discriminatory and an instrument of apartheid.

Within the civil court system applicable inside Israel proper, the bill imposes hanging for deliberate killings committed with the intent of “negating the existence of the State of Israel.” It restricts access to legal counsel and family visits, limits external oversight, and grants immunity to those who carry out executions. Within the military court system of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, it imposes the death penalty for killings classified as terrorism even without a prosecutor requesting it. Courts may substitute life imprisonment only in unspecified “exceptional” cases. Commutation of sentences is barred. Executions must be carried out within 90 days.

 The geographic and demographic logic of the law is stark. Israeli citizens and residents, including settlers in the West Bank who are tried in civil courts, are explicitly excluded from the military-court provisions. Palestinians are not. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem notes that military trials of Palestinians carry an approximately 96 percent conviction rate, based largely on confessions extracted under duress and torture. A conviction under a system built on coercion, followed by execution within three months, with restricted appeals, is not justice. It is state killing dressed in legal form.

Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, put it plainly: “The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.” The bill enshrines what critics have long described as a two-tier system of justice, one that grants rights to one population while denying them to another, a structure international law defines as apartheid.

Human rights principles are unequivocal: no judicial system riddled with coerced confessions, restricted appeals, and ethnic selectivity can be permitted to carry out irreversible punishments. The international community should treat this law for what it is, a grave violation of fundamental rights, and demand its immediate repeal.

Sources: Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 30, 2026. B’Tselem, statement on Palestinian military courts, March 2026. UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 36 on the right to life, October 2018.