In the aftermath of October 2023, Israel has accelerated an alarming legislative push aimed at authorizing the death penalty against Palestinian detainees. This renewed momentum emerges in a political climate shaped by mass arrests, torture, and other violations inside prisons, and a rise in deaths in custody. The current proposals do not represent a mere technical legal amendment but an effort to formally codify extrajudicial killing and executions, whether inside detention facilities or through field killings. The drive gained force under far-right leadership, particularly National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the “Jewish Power” party, with explicit endorsement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the aftermath of October 2023, Israel has accelerated an alarming legislative push aimed at authorizing the death penalty against Palestinian detainees. This renewed momentum unfolds amid mass arrests, systematic torture, and a sharp increase in deaths in custody. The proposed bills do not amount to a technical legal amendment; rather, they seek to formally codify extrajudicial killings and executions, whether carried out inside detention facilities or through field killings. This drive has gained force under far-right leadership, particularly National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the “Jewish Power” party, with explicit endorsement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Recent draft laws have emerged as part of the agenda of the “Jewish Power” party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has made legislating executions for Palestinians a central political priority. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly endorsed the initiative, affirming governmental support. Analysis of the proposed legislative texts shows that the law is effectively designed to apply exclusively to Palestinians, as it ties the punishment to “nationalistic motives” or “hostility toward the state,” terms used solely to describe Palestinian acts and never applied to settler or soldier offenses. The latter are tried in civilian courts that operate under a fundamentally different judicial framework with distinct procedures and protections.
The danger of these laws is further compounded by the nature of Israeli military courts that prosecute Palestinians in the West Bank, where conviction rates exceed 99 percent, with an almost total absence of fair-trial guarantees as set out in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These courts rely heavily on confessions extracted under pressure, restrict the defense’s access to evidence and witnesses, and are presided over by judges with military and security backgrounds who are part of the same apparatus of control. Granting such courts the authority to issue death sentences, with a simple majority rather than previous unanimous consent, enables the occupation to use the penalty as a political and security tool rather than a judicial measure that meets even the minimum standards of justice.
Legal framework & analysis
Israel’s attempts to legislate the death penalty for Palestinian detainees constitute a serious breach of multiple legal regimes governing situations of occupation as reaffirmed by the ICJ in its 2024 advisory opinion declaring the occupation unlawful in its entirety. Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), an occupying power is strictly prohibited from altering the penal system of the occupied territory except as necessary to maintain security and public order. Article 64 of the Fourth Geneva Convention limits legislative authority to essential security needs and explicitly forbids the introduction of discriminatory or politically motivated penal provisions. The ICJ’s recent advisory opinion makes clear that an unlawful occupation cannot rely on expanded punitive power. The proposed death penalty bill, designed to target Palestinians exclusively, represents a prohibited transformation of the penal landscape, based on ideological objectives rather than security necessity.
Israel systematically uses legislation as a tool of domination rather than regulation, emphasizing that linking penalties to “nationalistic motives” is a mechanism for codifying collective punishment, in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. reinforced by the ICJ’s finding that Israel’s administration of the territory lacks legal authority under international law. Granting military courts, have documented as structurally compromised, the authority to issue death sentences violates the right to a fair trial under Article 14 of the ICCPR, as these courts rely on coerced confessions, often deny access to legal counsel, and operate in coercive detention environments where torture is widespread.
These legislative efforts cannot be separated from the expanding reality of extrajudicial killings on the ground. A sustained pattern of field executions has targeted Palestinians posing no imminent threat. International bodies, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have noted that many of these killings constitute arbitrary executions prohibited under international humanitarian and human rights law.This pattern further corroborates the ICJ’s conclusion that Israel exercises unlawful force as part of an unlawful occupation. Strikingly, Israeli political and security officials openly justify such practices as a form of “deterrence,” reflecting a deliberate erosion of the fundamental international law principle: no one may be arbitrarily deprived of life.
Inside prisons, documented conditions have led to the deaths of over 97 detainees since October 2023, due to medical neglect, sensory deprivation, malnutrition, torture, and severe beatings, a practice known as “slow killing”. These acts constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention under Articles 32 and 147, including “willful killing,” “torture or inhuman treatment,” and “willfully causing great suffering.” When such acts are systematic, they reach the threshold of crimes against humanity (Article 7 of the Rome Statute).
Legislatively, the death penalty bill seeks to incorporate these violations into a formal legal framework, rather than leaving them as field practices or unofficial policies. By linking punishment to the identity of the targeted population instead of the criminal act, and granting military courts authority to impose executions, the law demonstrates a clear intent to use law as an instrument of political domination and collective subjugation. This aligns with the definition of persecution and apartheid under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, reflecting a racialized penal framework targeting Palestinians.
Finally, under occupation law, the occupying power is obliged to ensure the protection, dignity, and rights of the occupied population. Instead, Israel’s push to legalize executions represents a transition from de facto to de jure lethal governance, normalizing policies that fundamentally violate jus cogens norms, including the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of life and torture, among the highest-ranking norms in international law that cannot be derogated under any circumstances.
The proposal to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners is neither sudden nor new. It is part of a longstanding legislative trajectory that has been a persistent feature of Israeli political discourse for many years. It was reintroduced repeatedly over the past two decades, particularly in 2017 and 2018, when Avigdor Lieberman and the “Israel Beiteinu” party advanced a similar bill, which passed a preliminary reading in 2018. It was revived again in 2022 by Minister Ben-Gvir, who introduced amendments expanding its potential scope. However, post–October 7 political moment provided the Israeli government with what it perceived as a rare opportunity to accelerate policies that had previously stalled, from the E1 settlement expansion project to the renewed push for the death penalty bill, under the belief that the current climate offers political and public cover to codify measures that had long been practiced informally on the ground.
These legislative pushes emerge within a broader context of escalating hate speech and violence in Israeli political culture. Polls in 2017 show that 2\3 of the Israeli public support imposing the death penalty on Palestinians, regardless of whether the victim is a civilian or a fighter. This societal shift, reinforced by a culture of impunity, creates an environment that encourages legislative extremism and normalizes policies that blatantly violate the basic principles of international law.