Israel's parliament passed a sweeping death penalty law targeting Palestinians on Monday, triggering widespread international condemnation - as lawmakers celebrated with champagne inside the Knesset .
The bill, approved by 62 of the Knesset's 120 members with 48 opposed and one abstention, will instruct military courts to impose capital punishment on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in acts defined as "terrorism". It takes effect within 30 days, and crucially, does not apply to Jewish Israelis convicted of the same crime.
Far-right extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who had made the law a core condition of his party's coalition agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared in the chamber wearing a lapel pin shaped like a metal noose before the vote.
"From today, every terrorist will know - whoever takes a life, the State of Israel will take their life," he declared, as Israeli media reported that some lawmakers had marked the passage of the bill with champagne. A law 'worded to target Palestinians' Legal expert Amichai Cohen of the Israel Democracy Institute confirmed to the Associated Press that Jewish citizens would not face prosecution under the new law. The Knesset's own National Security Committee lawyer raised concerns during deliberations, noting the bill contains no provision for clemency - putting it at odds with international legal conventions.
Under the law, executions by hanging must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, with no possibility of pardon. Death sentences can be handed down by a simple majority of military judges rather than a unanimous decision, and appeals will be severely restricted.
Israeli rights organisation B'Tselem warned that the law was designed to normalise executions as a routine tool of punishment.
"The law is worded in such a way that it targets only Palestinians," the group stated.
B'Tselem noted that military courts, where only Palestinians are tried, carry a conviction rate of around 96 percent, with many relying on confessions obtained through 'coercion and torture'.
B'Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said Israel was "reaching a new low in the dehumanisation of Palestinians, enshrining their cruel treatment in state law".
"[Israel] already kills Palestinians systematically and faces no demands for accountability. Under the leadership of top ministers, the Israeli system is day by day becoming a system that normalises the killing and injury of human beings," he added. International condemnation The Palestinian Authority described the bill as a war crime, saying it violated the Fourth Geneva Convention's protections for individuals and guarantees of fair trial. The PA urged the international community to impose sanctions on Israel and hold it accountable for what it described as ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people.
The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, and the UK had already jointly condemned the bill on Sunday, before it was passed into law.
Amnesty International called on Israeli authorities to repeal the law immediately. Senior Director Erika Guevara-Rosas said the Knesset had delivered "a public display of cruelty, discrimination and utter contempt for human rights", at a moment when global momentum is moving toward abolishing capital punishment, not expanding it.
Amnesty highlighted that the law effectively creates a near-mandatory death sentence, given that military courts are "notorious for disregarding due process" and that the bill fails to define the "special circumstances" under which a life sentence could be substituted.
Guevara-Rosas noted that Netanyahu himself, currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was among those who voted in favour.
Within minutes of the vote, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition to the Supreme Court challenging the law, describing it as "discriminatory by design" and enacted without legal authority over West Bank Palestinians.
Five Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations, including Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, also filed an urgent petition to the Supreme Court, arguing that the law "adopts an apartheid-like approach to the fundamental right to life" and represents a near-mandatory death sentence that strips judges of independence and discretion.
The petitioners further argued that the Knesset had no legal authority to legislate over Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and that the law meets the definition of racist apartheid legislation prohibited under customary international law.
Since October 2023, more than 80 Palestinians have died inside Israeli prisons, which B'Tselem has described as having become a network of torture facilities. As of this month, around 9,500 Palestinians remain detained, with roughly half held under administrative detention, meaning imprisonment without charge or trial.
Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner advocacy organisation, confirmed that more than a third of those currently detained are being held without ever facing a court.
Amnesty described the law as the culmination of a long-standing pattern of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians carried out with near-total impunity and now formalised as state-sanctioned policy.
"The international community must exert maximum pressure on Israeli authorities to immediately repeal this law," Guevara-Rosas said, "and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians."