Fear for her son’s fate kept Maisoun Shawamreh awake through the night in the occupied West Bank following the Israeli parliament’s approval of a law permitting the execution of Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks.
“The mothers of prisoners — none of us slept last night,” Shawamreh told AFP as she joined a protest in Ramallah against the law on Tuesday.
Her son has been in detention for three years, awaiting sentencing on charges of attempted murder.
“He may or may not be subject to execution,” she said, uncertain of what lies ahead.
Under the new law, passed in parliament late Monday, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks classified as “terrorism” will face the death penalty as a default sentence.
Because Palestinians in the territory are automatically tried in Israeli military courts, the measure effectively creates a separate and harsher legal track.
In Israeli civilian courts, the law allows for either death or life imprisonment for those convicted of killing with the intent to harm the state.
While the law does not provide for retroactive application, critics say the distinction underscores a system of unequal justice.
In Ramallah, dozens of activists, political factions and civil society groups gathered to protest the law.
Some held placards depicting a blindfolded prisoner flanked by two hanging nooses — a stark image of what they fear lies ahead.
“Stop the execution of prisoners law before it’s too late,” read the placards, held alongside portraits of imprisoned Palestinians.
Abdullah al-Zaghari, director of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, condemned what he described was an openly discriminatory law.
“This fascist and racist legislation reflects the reality of the occupation,” he said. “It applies to Palestinians — not to Israeli Jews who carry out daily violence against Palestinian civilians.”
Haitham, a 28-year-old employee of an international humanitarian organisation, said the law was “horrible”.
“But we expected it … What can you expect from a government with people like Netanyahu?” he told AFP, declining to give his last name.
After lawmakers approved the bill, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir celebrated its passage with a champagne toast in a parliamentary corridor, joined by some fellow legislators.
Doubt in Israel
The law “seriously jeopardises Israel’s observer status with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe”, said Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe President Petra Bayr.
It “distances Israel from the values of the Council of Europe, which stands strongly against the death penalty anywhere and in all circumstances”, Bayr added, hoping Israel’s supreme court would reject the bill.
Shortly after the law was passed, the council said its adoption “represents a serious regression”.
Even within Israel, some scepticism has emerged.
The legislation is “primitive and very stupid”, said Meyir Lahav, a physician from Tel Aviv, adding that such measures were “deplorable and unacceptable in our society”.
“We should be ashamed.”
“What I don’t like is that it doesn’t apply to everyone,” said Tom, a software engineer, who gave only his first name.
“If someone commits murder, it should apply to all — Jews, Arabs, Muslims alike.”
Yves, a French resident of Israel, also opposed the measure.
“To decide that, once a person has been captured, they should be put to death — regardless of what they have done — and to entrust another with carrying out that act, is something I reject on principle,” he said.
But others, like businessman Noah Levi, firmly backed the law.
“The death penalty is a very good thing; we should have implemented it a long time ago,” Levi said.
The death penalty exists in Israel but it has been applied only twice: in 1948, shortly after the state’s founding, against a military captain accused of high treason, and then in 1962, when the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
Meanwhile, the new law is already facing legal challenges.
Several Israeli human rights groups, along with three members of parliament, filed petitions to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the law.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said the law created “two parallel tracks, both designed to apply to Palestinians”, and should be struck down on constitutional grounds.
Header image: Israeli security detain protesters that had gathered outside the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem on March 31, 2026, during a demonstration against the passing of a law allowing for the death penalty against Palestinians. — AFP
