Israel’s death penalty law is not about executing Palestinians

On Monday, Israel passed a death penalty law allowing it to hang those convicted of “terror offences” within an accelerated 90-day period.

The law is no surprise for Palestinians; it is only another step in a longstanding strategy of elimination. In the last two and a half years, at least 87 Palestinian detainees have been killed in what human rights organisations describe as a “network of torture camps” – the highest recorded number since 1967.

While United Nations bodies and various states have expressed concern and condemnation, Palestinians understand this law for what it is: the institutionalisation of a practice well under way.

It is not just the provisions of the law that are significant, but also the context in which it is passed. It comes less than a month after Israel dropped all charges against its soldiers accused of mass raping Palestinian detainees at the notorious detention camp of Sde Teiman.

This is not incidental. Israel is legalising a pattern of impunity. One population is granted explicit impunity for organised sexual violence while the other is now subject to execution within 90 days, in a military court system that convicts 96 percent of Palestinians – often on the basis of confessions extracted through torture.

It also comes at a time of visible and intensified Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank. In the last month alone, and in tandem with the United States and Israel’s war on Iran, armed Israeli militias carried out more than 7,300 violations against Palestinians in the West Bank alone, including killings, raids, arrests, damage and destruction of property and blocking of the freedom of movement.

In late 2023, the entire population of Khirbet Zanuta, in the southern West Bank, was forced out after relentless settler attacks that made remaining impossible. In the north, in 2025, refugee camps were destroyed, depopulated, and turned into Israeli military bases. Previously dismantled illegal Israeli settlements are being rebuilt and legally recognised by Israel.

In recent months, not only has the frequency of Israeli attacks against Palestinians increased, but the violence has also become more ferocious and savage.

Between January and March, Israeli settlers and soldiers kidnapped children, carried out pogroms, sexually assaulted Palestinian men – even going as far as tying their genitals and parading them around their village – and point-blank executed Palestinian families.