“This is historic! With God’s help, soon we will execute them one by one!”
These were the words spoken by Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir on Monday, March 31, just after a 62–48 vote in the Israeli Knesset that passed a law to apply the death penalty to convicted ‘terrorists’.
Ben-Gvir celebrated the Death Penalty for Terrorists Bill by popping open bottles of champagne and embracing fellow supporters at the Knesset. In the run-up to the vote, he had worn a lapel pin in the shape of a noose, symbolising his support for the legislation.
Limor Son Har Melech, a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s nationalist party, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), was in tears as she read out the results. Melech had introduced the law along with Nissim Vaturi, Knesset deputy speaker and member of Benjamin Netanyahu‘s Likud party.
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The law effectively enshrines capital punishment for Palestinians who “intentionally cause the death of a person with the aim of denying the existence of the State of Israel”.
It has sparked fierce criticism in Israel, the Palestinian territories and abroad for its retaliatory nature, de facto targeting of Palestinians and electorally motivated reasoning.
Death by default
The law says that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank – referred to as Judea and Samaria in the text – would face the death penalty by default if the homicide is classified as an act of terrorism by the Israeli military court, barring specific appeals.
The Knesset stated in Hebrew that the bill mandates that a “resident of the area, except for an Israeli citizen or Israel resident, who intentionally caused the death of a person in an act of terrorism, shall be imposed with the death penalty, unless the military court finds that special circumstances exist under which it is appropriate to impose a sentence of life imprisonment”. It remains unclear what the “special circumstances” are.
“Resident of the region”, in this case, refers to anyone registered in the region’s population register or who resides in the region, according to the law. It excludes Israeli citizens or residents, which in this case means settlers.
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The law is not retroactive and will only apply to Palestinians arrested after it comes into effect. Death sentence “by hanging” would be carried out within 90 days of the final conviction, with a possible postponement of up to 180 days.
The Gaza Strip is not mentioned in the text, but a separate bill, which is currently being debated in the Knesset, is intended to establish a special court for the prosecution of those who participated in the October 7 massacre. The bill is set to be presented in parliament in the first week of the Knesset summer session, which begins on March 10.
Although the death penalty has been technically legal in limited forms since Israel’s founding, the country has only carried out two state-authorised executions. The first took place in 1948, against an army captain wrongly accused of high treason. The second was against Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was hanged for genocide and crimes against humanity in 1962.
Condemned at home and abroad
Palestinians were horrified by the law, and shuttered shops and public institutions across the main cities of Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus in the West Bank on Wednesday. Dozens of citizens – including activists, political factions and civil society groups – also gathered to protest the law on the streets.
Ramallah-based psychologist Raman, 53, told news agency AFP that “there isn’t a single person standing here who doesn’t have a brother, a husband, a son, or even a neighbour in prison. There is no Palestinian family without a prisoner”.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party called for general strikes, while Hamas said the passing of the law “reflected the bloody nature of the occupation and its policy based on killing and terrorism”.
Minutes after the adoption of the Death Penalty for Terrorists Bill into law, Israeli human rights organisation Association for Civil Rights in Israel said they had filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court.
In a damning post on their website, they described the law as “depressing and infuriating”, condemning the “disgraceful jubilation surrounding such a repugnant law by the racist and extremist Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and other members of the government”. They had earlier described the law as discriminatory, racist, and unconstitutional.
The Knesset “is not authorised to legislate directly for the West Bank, since the military commander is the legal sovereign in the occupied territory”, they pointed out.
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Israeli rabbi and researcher Elhanan Miller shares that view. In an interview with FRANCE 24’s Arabic channel, he said he expected the law to be overturned by Israel’s Supreme Court – “It is illegal to apply Israeli law in the West Bank to Palestinians as it is an occupied territory under military control,” he explained.
Several European countries have expressed their concern as well. Spain said the law was “a further step towards apartheid”, and the EU urged Israel to “abide by its previous position”, saying that the approval of the Death Penalty Bill “marks a grave regression”, noting its “de facto discriminatory character”.
The Council of Europe has threatened to revoke Israel’s observer status, while the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights believes that the application of this law would be considered a war crime.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International denounced the law as “carte blanche to execute Palestinians while stripping away the most basic fair-trial safeguards”, and pointed out that Israeli military courts had a “conviction rate of over 99% for Palestinian defendants.”
A politically motivated law
“This judiciary is a stain on Israel, with its discrimination between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank,” said Miller. “It is an unjust law for developed and advanced Western countries, introduced by the extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in an attempt to score points before the elections.” The next parliamentary elections must be held before October 27, 2026.
“Netanyahu is afraid of the coming elections and wants to curry favour with the Israeli ideological right, at the expense of Israel’s image in the world and in the West in particular [where this law is criticized],” Miller added.
Ben-Gvir doesn’t deny the political context, gloating on X about fulfilling his election promise, saying in Hebrew, ” We promised. We delivered.”
Akram Hassoun, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament and member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, voted in favour of the bill and acknowledged the political motivations.
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“This law was proposed by the coalition to which I belong,” he explained on FRANCE 24’s Arabic channel. “If you want this coalition to support you on an issue that concerns Israeli Arabs, you have to support what concerns them.”
Lamenting what he considers “a misinterpretation of the text by the media in an electoral context”, Hassoun said that, fundamentally, the law targets “terrorists who want to kill innocent people” and “is intended as a deterrent for any citizen who does not believe in the sanctity of life, so that no one is killed, neither Arab nor Jew”.
He added: “Anyone who takes another person’s life without any reason must be executed. They can be Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Druze, or of any other faith.”
When asked if he supported applying the law to an Israeli settler who killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, he said: “I don’t think about that kind of case, but anyone who takes the life of a Palestinian in a terrorist attack will have this law applied to them.”
The law, however, explicitly excludes this scenario.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
