Israel Passes Death Penalty Law Targeting Palestinians

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Ben-Gvir wore a noose pin to the vote. The bill passed 62–48. A Supreme Court petition followed within hours. And an advocacy group says more than 350 Palestinians have already died in Israeli custody — before this law existed.

By TRH World Desk

New Delhi, March 31, 2026 — Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, voted Monday to approve a bill that would make death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of carrying out deadly attacks — a move that rights groups immediately denounced as discriminatory, unconstitutional, and a deliberate construction of two separate legal systems: one for Palestinians, one for everyone else.

The bill passed 62 votes to 48, with one abstention. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among those who voted in favour. The legislation was championed by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who arrived at the Knesset wearing a lapel pin in the shape of a noose.

After the vote, Ben-Gvir posted on X: “We made history!!! We promised. We delivered.” In a subsequent statement, he went further: “From now on, every mother in Judea and Samaria will know that if her child goes out to murder someone, his punishment will be the gallows.”

The framing — “every mother in Judea and Samaria” — was not incidental. It was a direct address to Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank, delivered by a minister who has consistently treated the incitement of Palestinian communities as a political instrument.

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What the Law Actually Does — and Who It Targets

The bill creates, in the words of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, “two parallel tracks, both designed to apply to Palestinians.”

Under the legislation, Palestinians in the West Bank who are convicted by Israeli military courts of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks will face a near-mandatory death sentence. The sentence may be reduced to life imprisonment only under “special circumstances.” The method of execution is specified as hanging. It must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, with a possible postponement of up to 180 days.

Palestinians in the West Bank are automatically tried in Israeli military courts — they have no access to the civilian court system that applies to Israeli citizens and residents.

A separate provision applies to Israeli civilian courts: anyone “who intentionally causes the death of a person with the aim of harming an Israeli citizen or resident out of an intention to put an end to the existence of the State of Israel” shall face death or life imprisonment. But as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel noted in its petition to the Supreme Court, the clause requiring that the perpetrator intend to “negate the existence” of Israel “structurally excludes Jewish perpetrators.”

The legal architecture is not subtle. It was built to apply to Palestinians.

‘Hamas Has Defeated Us’

Not all opposition to the bill came from outside the ruling coalition’s political universe. Ram Ben Barak — opposition lawmaker and former Deputy Director of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service — rose in parliament to deliver one of the most striking dissenting statements of the debate: “Do you understand what it means that there is one law for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and a different law for the general public for which the State of Israel is responsible? It says that Hamas has defeated us. It has defeated us because we have lost all our values.”

The argument is significant coming from a figure of Ben Barak’s intelligence and security background: that the adoption of discriminatory legislation is not a sign of Israeli strength, but of a state so corroded by the logic of its far-right coalition that it has begun to dismantle the foundational values it once claimed to defend.

A supporter of the bill offered the opposite framing. Limor Son Har-Melech, a lawmaker from Ben-Gvir’s party, whose husband was killed in a Palestinian militant attack, told parliament: “For years, we endured a cruel cycle of terror, imprisonment, release in reckless deals, and the return of these human monsters to murder Jews again. And today, my friends, this cycle has come full circle.”

The dehumanising language — “human monsters” — passed unremarked within the chamber. It was heard clearly outside it.

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Rights Groups: The Killing Was Already Happening

The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy placed the new law in a context that official Israeli and Western framing has consistently avoided: it is not a beginning. It is an acceleration.

“The occupation has already committed the crime of slow killing against prisoners, with more than 350 Palestinian prisoners having died inside prisons prior to the passage of this law — as a result of torture, medical neglect, and systematic abuse. This means that the law does not initiate killing, but will instead accelerate it and grant it official cover,” said the Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy in a statement.

The Center characterised the legislation as “an open declaration of war on the lives of prisoners, transforming prisons into execution platforms under a judicial system that is fully biased and devoid of even the minimum standards of justice or independence.” It called on the United Nations Security Council, the Arab League, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to take immediate practical steps — not symbolic statements — to halt implementation and pursue international legal accountability.

The Center also turned its criticism toward Arab states, accusing them of a “timid” response that has “exerted no real pressure” on Israel throughout a period of escalating violations.

Supreme Court Challenge Filed

Within hours of the Knesset vote, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court demanding the law’s annulment on both jurisdictional and constitutional grounds, arguing it conflicts with Israel’s Basic Laws, which prohibit arbitrary discrimination.

Whether the Supreme Court — which the Netanyahu government has itself moved to weaken through its judicial overhaul — will act on the petition, and how quickly, remains to be seen. The political conditions that produced this legislation did not emerge in isolation. They emerged from a sustained and deliberate effort by the far-right elements of Israel’s governing coalition to reshape Israeli law in their own image, with Ben-Gvir as the most visible face of that project.

TRH Comment

There is a word for a legal system that mandates death for one group and offers discretion to another, that routes one population through military courts stripped of due process protections while the other faces civilian trial, that writes its capital statutes in language architecturally designed to exclude one ethnicity from their reach. That word is not security. It is not justice. It is discrimination — formal, legislated, and now wearing the endorsement of a parliamentary majority of 62.

Ben-Gvir called it history. Ram Ben Barak called it defeat. The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy called it what the record supports: not the start of killing, but its official codification.

The noose pin said the quiet part loudly. The vote confirmed it.