Expert: Suhad Bishara, Legal Director of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
Question: The Israeli Knesset (parliament) recently passed a controversial law, the so-called “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law,” which stipulates that individuals convicted of politically-motivated killings are to be executed. The law, which was written so it will only apply to Palestinians, has been condemned by rights groups, the U.N., and many governments. Amnesty International called it “one of the world’s most extreme death penalty laws.” Capital punishment was already legal in Israel, but only for crimes against humanity and treason and was only used twice, the last time in 1962.
What does this new law say and how quickly will it come into effect in terms of executions actually taking place?
Suhad Bishara: The new law operates on two tracks – both of which, as you note, specifically target Palestinians.
In the occupied West Bank, the law requires Israeli military courts, where only Palestinians face trial, to impose the death penalty on those convicted of intentional killings defined as “acts of terrorism” under Israeli law. A conviction only needs a simple majority of judges, not a unanimous decision. The law also makes the death penalty a mandatory sentence, stripping away judicial discretion and allowing courts to impose a life sentence only in “exceptional cases.”
In Israeli criminal courts—which have jurisdiction over Israeli citizens and residents, including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem—the law includes a political, ideological condition: the death penalty can be imposed if the killing was committed with the aim of “negating the existence of the State of Israel.” This wording targets Palestinians while intentional killings by Israeli Jewish settlers of Palestinians, for example, would be exempt from the death penalty.
The discriminatory motivation behind the law was made explicit during debates in the Knesset, with lawmakers openly stating that there are no “Jewish terrorists.”
The execution process itself is also extremely egregious. Once a final sentence is delivered, execution by hanging must be carried out within 90 days. The law removes key legal protections – there is no possibility for pardons or reduced sentences in the military courts.
The law is not retroactive, so it does not apply to the almost 10,000 Palestinians already in Israeli custody, however, it creates an immediate and irreversible legal pathway for any Palestinian prosecuted for acts occurring from this point forward.
Immediately after the passage of the law, Adalah, together with Israeli human rights organizations (Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, HaMoked, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, and Gisha) and Palestinian members of the Knesset, filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court against it, along with a request for an interim injunction to halt its implementation. So far, the court has not granted this request.
Q: Since the start of Israel’s military occupation in 1967, Israel has imposed a two-tiered legal system in the West Bank. Israeli settlers enjoy the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship while Palestinians are governed by brutal military rule with effectively no rights. Rights groups and other experts have concluded this amounts to a system of apartheid.
Please explain how Israel’s military court system works and how Israeli settlers living in the West Bank in violation of international law who are accused of acts of violence against Palestinians are treated compared with Palestinians living in the same territory who are accused of acts of violence against Israelis.
SB: Israeli settlers residing illegally in occupied Palestinian territory are subject to Israeli criminal law, which provides them with significantly greater legal protections and civil rights. Palestinians, however, are charged in military courts, which strips them of the most fundamental elements of a fair trial.
The military system is characterized by widespread arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, secret evidence that defendants cannot challenge and confessions, which are routinely obtained from Palestinians under physical and psychological torture. Over the past two and a half years particularly, since October 2023, Israeli detention has effectively become a network of torture camps, with a deliberate policy of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian prisoners. This military system maintains a conviction rate exceeding 95%.
The military courts’ lack of fair trial guarantees renders any death penalty sentence imposed in such a system an arbitrary deprivation of life, a flagrant violation of international law, and potentially a war crime.
While Palestinians are subjected to this inherently unjust system, Israeli settlers who commit brutal acts of violence and even kill Palestinians in the West Bank rarely face any consequences at all. In the past month alone, there has been a surge in state-backed settler terror in the West Bank in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes resulting in multiple Palestinian deaths. Yet, due to near-total immunity, these perpetrators rarely face indictment.
The introduction of the death penalty entrenches this apartheid system: it ensures the gallows are reserved for Palestinians alone, while Israeli Jewish citizens remain shielded by a civilian system where execution is not even a legal possibility.
Q: Israel has been killing Palestinians and others extrajudicially for many decades, including assassinations of Palestinian political and military leaders, and Israeli soldiers and police summarily executing Palestinian captives who posed no threat. Do you see the death penalty law as a continuation or evolution of this practice, essentially codifying it into law, and why enact it now?
SB: This law joins a system that has long relied on lethal Israeli policies against Palestinians, including extrajudicial assassinations and summary executions. For decades, Israeli forces have carried out these killings with almost total impunity—an impunity consistently upheld by a judiciary that has dismissed dozens of legal challenges brought by Adalah and many others.
With the passage of this law, the use of state-sanctioned killing was formally written into law, transforming what was already an intrinsic part of the system of control over Palestinians into explicit statute.
Such violence, enabled by the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians, is already visible in Israeli detention centers. We have seen a deliberate policy of horrific abuse and ill-treatment that has resulted in at least 100 confirmed deaths of Palestinians being held by Israel since October 2023.
This law is the legislative extension of that violence. The entire legislative process was marked by extreme incitement, with proponents like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who himself was convicted of supporting a terrorist organization before he entered politics – openly celebrating the bill with champagne, and with right-wing politicians even wearing golden noose-shaped pins on their lapels.
With this law the state is signaling that its systemic violence against Palestinians no longer needs to be hidden under the guise of “security” operations. It is now a permanent, codified feature of a legal system designed to facilitate state violence against the Palestinian people.
Q: Does this law enjoy widespread support among Israelis, and if so, what does it say about how they view Palestinians?
SB: The law has significant support among Jewish Israeli politicians, having passed with 62 votes and only 48 against, including some support from some opposition members.
Some polls show that over 50% of Jewish Israelis support the imposition of the death penalty in this context.
The popularity of this law shows how deeply the dehumanization of Palestinians has become a core political consensus in Israel. This reflects a broader public mood that either backs or overlooks the ongoing campaign of destruction in Gaza and the entrenchment of apartheid in the West Bank. These viewpoints are reinforced by systemic incitement and dehumanization of Palestinians by Israeli ministers at the highest levels of government.
However, this consensus is not absolute, and it is being met with fierce resistance by human rights organizations, legal experts, and some political figures, including Palestinian Knesset members, who represent Palestinian citizens of Israel, more than 20% of Israel’s population, who also oppose this law.
Q: Many governments, including some of Israel’s backers in the E.U., have condemned this law, while the Trump administration has declined to do so. What, if anything, can the international community, in particular the U.S. and Israel’s other Western allies, do to stop Israel from implementing it?
SB: There is a growing global consensus against the death penalty. This law is not only a regressive step against the international movement toward the abolition of the death penalty, but also a direct violation of international commitments Israel has made over the decades.
It has been widely condemned internationally, by the E.U., numerous individual European states, U.N. bodies, and international human rights organizations, which noted that it is discriminatory and violates international law. While the United States, which continues to practice the death penalty, has failed to condemn the law, mere rhetoric from other countries is no longer enough.
What is required now are concrete measures to stop the law from being implemented and to end Israel’s systematic, egregious human rights violations against Palestinians. The international community must move beyond expressions of concern and employ the full spectrum of tools at their disposal to prevent the implementation of the law.