Umm Yousef Dahdouh, a displaced Palestinian mother of three prisoners held by Israel, displays a picture of one of her jailed sons while sitting inside her displacement tent in Gaza City, on March 30, 2026. (Credit: Dawoud Abu Alkas/AFP)
Israel's Knesset approved a bill on Monday that allows for the execution of Palestinians who have been charged and convicted of "deadly attacks," a move sharply criticized as discriminatory by rights groups and European states.
Sixty-two lawmakers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, voted in favour and 48 against the bill, championed by the extreme right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party. There was one abstention and the remaining MPs were not present.
Ben Gvir has worn a lapel pin in the shape of a noose, symbolizing his support for the legislation, in the run-up to the vote.
The legislation will see the death penalty become the default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank convicted by Israeli military courts of carrying out "deadly attacks."
Palestinians in the West Bank are automatically tried in Israeli military courts, while criminal courts try Israeli nationals, including Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is one of many laws in Israel that international human rights groups have deemed lead to an apartheid system: a systematic, state-sanctioned, policy of segregation.
The bill says that the sentence may be reduced to life imprisonment under "special circumstances."
Meanwhile, under the bill, in Israeli criminal courts anyone "who intentionally causes the death of a person with the aim of harming an Israeli citizen or resident out of an intention to put an end to the existence of the State of Israel shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment."
The bill sets the execution method as hanging, adding that it should be carried out within 90 days of the sentencing, with a possible postponement of up to 180 days.
Opposition lawmaker and former deputy Mossad director, Ram Ben Barak, expressed outrage at the legislation.
"Do you understand what it means that there is one law for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and a different law for the general public for which the State of Israel is responsible?" he asked fellow parliamentarians, using the Israeli name for the West Bank.
"I'll tell you what it says. It says that Hamas has defeated us. It has defeated us because we have lost all our values," he said.
"It has defeated us because we are beginning to conduct ourselves like them, unfortunately. Full of hatred. And vengeance."
'Discriminatory application'
MP Limor Son Har-Melech from Ben Gvir's party, who years ago survived an attack by Palestinian militants in which her husband was killed, urged fellow parliamentarians to approve the bill.
A vote on the bill is expected by Monday night.
In February, Amnesty International urged Israeli MPs to reject the legislation, which it said "would allow Israeli courts to expand their use of death sentences with discriminatory application against Palestinians."
On Sunday, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy expressed "deep concern" over the legislation, which they said risked "undermining Israel's commitments with regards to democratic principles."
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country — the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann was the last person to be executed in 1962.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence there has soared since Israel began its war on Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, operation.
