The Israeli Knesset voted 62 to 48 to approve a law that makes the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians convicted in military courts of killing Israelis. The result is a system of capital punishment applied, by virtue of judicial structure, to one national group and not another within the same territory.
The issue lies first in the severity of the punishment and second in the mechanism through which it was adopted: a democratic vote that enshrined a discriminatory penalty in law. The legislation operates through two parallel legal systems that produce different outcomes depending on the national identity of the defendant.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are subject to Israeli Military Order No. 1651 and are tried in military courts. The new law sets hanging as the default punishment for murder offences classified as terrorism.
Israeli settlers in the same territory are tried in civil courts, where judicial discretion is maintained, and the death penalty remains one of the possible sentencing options. The law explicitly excludes Israeli citizens and residents from the jurisdiction of military courts.
This exclusion is deliberate in design. The jurisdictional framework has been structured to produce a specific outcome: exposing Palestinians to capital punishment while preserving procedural safeguards for Israelis.
Procedural conditions deepen this structural disparity. Military courts operate with an estimated conviction rate of around 96%, with convictions frequently based on confessions obtained under conditions documented by multiple rights organisations as coercive.
The new law reduces the requirement for issuing a death sentence from full judicial unanimity to a simple majority. It removes the authority of the military commander to commute sentences, bans pardons, mandates execution within 90 days, and restricts appeals.
At the same time, data from human rights organisations indicate that around 93% of complaints regarding settler violence against Palestinians are dismissed without charges.
The law, therefore, introduces an accelerated capital punishment mechanism within a system that simultaneously ensures near-total impunity for lethal violence in the opposite direction.
These measures engage three branches of international law. Under international humanitarian law, Article 68 of the Fourth Geneva Convention permits the death penalty in occupied territories only under specific conditions: that the offence was punishable by death under the law in force before the occupation, and that it is limited to espionage, serious sabotage, or intentional killing.
The 90-day execution timeframe constitutes a clear breach of international humanitarian law, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The prohibition on sentence commutation also violates Additional Protocol I, which guarantees the right to seek pardon.
The application of the law in the occupied Palestinian territories has been described by the High Commissioner as a war crime.
Under international human rights law, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights limits the death penalty to the most serious crimes, with strict procedural safeguards.
The 2018 General Comment of the Human Rights Committee states that mandatory death sentences, which remove judicial discretion, are inherently arbitrary. Article 26 prohibits discrimination in law on grounds including national origin.
A capital punishment system whose application depends entirely on a specialised court structure determined by whether the defendant is Palestinian or Israeli constitutes a discriminatory application of the death penalty.
Under international criminal law, the law falls within the framework of apartheid, defined as inhumane acts committed within an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.
This includes a differentiated system of capital punishment applied to one national group and not another within the same territory, administered through separate court systems with significantly different procedural safeguards and conviction rates.
The deeper structural issue lies in the relationship between democratic procedure and substantive legitimacy.
International human rights law draws a clear distinction between the two. Procedural legitimacy, meaning the regularity of a parliamentary vote, does not resolve substantive illegitimacy. The entire structure of treaty obligations is based on the principle that certain rights are non-derogable regardless of domestic majority decisions. Parliamentary approval does not alter that assessment. Apartheid legislation in South Africa was enacted through parliament, and the Nuremberg Laws were passed by the Reichstag.
The post-1945 human rights framework is grounded in the recognition that procedural regularity does not prevent systematic discrimination when affected populations are denied effective political representation in the legislature. Palestinians in the West Bank have no right to vote in the Knesset, no legal standing in Israeli civil courts, and no ability to challenge the jurisdiction of military courts.
The law was passed by a body that is not electorally accountable to the population most affected by it. And it exposes a structural condition in which democratic form and discriminatory substance coexist without contradiction at the domestic level, leaving international mechanisms as the only corrective avenue.
The question is whether those mechanisms will be effective. Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here . Fadel Abdulghany is the founder and executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) which he established in 2011. Follow Fadel on X: @FADELABDULGHANY Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.