Introduction

On Monday, 03 November 2025, the National Security Committee of the Israeli Knesset approved a draft bill imposing the death penalty on Palestinians. The bill, if enacted, would apply the death penalty to any person who kills an Israeli on national grounds. The Knesset was expected to approve the bill in its first reading this week; however, Israeli media outlets reported that consideration of the bill has been postponed, along with several other draft bills, due to internal factional disputes within the Knesset.

Current deliberations on this bill, whether in the media or among human rights organizations, present a deceptive and misleading image portraying Israel as one of the states that do not apply the death penalty saying that it had already abolished this penalty but now intends to reactivate it against Palestinian detainees. This position paper seeks to clarify the facts surrounding the death penalty in Israel and to demonstrate that, in practice, Israel has continued to implement it against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) for decades.

1- The State of Israel is not among the states that have abolished the death penalty. It has not also acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of 1966, adopted in December 1989, which obliges signatory states to abolish the death penalty. Accordingly, Israel remains among the states whose national legislation continues to provide for the death penalty.

2- Since its establishment in 1948, Israel inherited the laws of the British Mandate over Palestine, which included the death penalty, particularly the 1945 Emergency Regulations that embody the colonial experience in oppressing and suppressing peoples under colonial rule. In 1954, Israel abolished the death penalty for ordinary civilian murders but continued to apply it for crimes related to the pursuit of Nazis, genocide, and treason offenses. In 1962, Adolf Eichmann was executed by hanging after being convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

3- The most alarming aspect of the new draft bill is that it applies retroactively, marking an unprecedented escalation in Israeli legislation, particularly in the field of penal law, as it would take effect immediately upon its enactment and publication. It is evident that this bill was drafted in line with the positions of senior figures in the Israeli government, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, with the intent of executing collective death sentences that could target hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Al-Qassam Brigades’ elite forces who were arrested on or after 7 October. Thus, the essence of this draft bill reflects a retaliatory and revengeful motive, rather than serving as a measure of deterrence or prevention.

4- The non-issuance or execution of death sentences by Israeli courts against Palestinians has never stemmed from any legal or moral commitment, nor from respect for human dignity. Rather, it has been driven by security considerations- on the one hand, to extract information from detainees at later stages, and on the other, to maintain the inhumane conditions to which Palestinian detainees are subjected. In all, these practices amount to a form of slow death for the detainees.

5- The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have perpetrated- and continue to perpetrate-thousands of extrajudicial executions against Palestinians through various methods, most notably:

• Assassinations: Assassinations or what Israel refers to as “targeted killings” constitute an official and declared Israeli policy against Palestinians. Under this policy, Palestinians are targeted and killed based on information collected by Israeli security apparatuses. Thus, the IOF acts as both prosecutor and judge, serving as the authority that approves and carries out these unlawful assassinations. While perpetrating such crimes, the IOF show no regard for the lives of others who may be killed alongside the intended targets. According to Palestinian human rights organizations, the IOF has conducted hundreds of assassinations over the decades. The majority of the victims of these crimes were defenseless, non-targeted civilians, including children and women, who happened to be present at the scene of the attack.
• Sniping Operations: the human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases in which trained snipers from the IOF opened fire on Palestinian civilians, killing them instantly. During the genocide in the Gaza Strip, these human rights organizations recorded dozens of incidents where Israeli snipers targeted defenseless Palestinian civilians, either during the evacuation of Gaza’s population or as civilians attempted to obtain humanitarian aid, among other circumstances. During the Great March of Return protests in 2018, the organizations documented dozens of additional cases where Israeli snipers, positioned in fortified military watchtowers, opened fire on participants in the peaceful protests along the Gaza border fence. As a result, hundreds of protesters were killed and injured.
• Shooting at military checkpoints: the organizations have documented dozens of shooting incidents in which Palestinian civilians were killed at Israeli military checkpoints, particularly in the West Bank, where the IOF have erupted hundreds of checkpoints separating Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps. These incidents reflect the IOF’s permissive rules of engagement, which authorize soldiers to kill Palestinians in cold blood.
• Shooting peaceful protesters in the West Bank:  Amid loose rules of engagement, hundreds of Palestinians participating in peaceful protests have been killed during IOF incursions deep into residential areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, or during demonstrations protesting settlement expansion and land seizures. The organizations have documented hundreds of killing incidents in which the protesters posed no threat whatsoever to the lives of Israeli soldiers.
• Killing detainees: A slow death has become an imminent fate for many Palestinian detainees held in IOF prisons and detention facilities due to the systematic deterioration of inhumane living conditions. Dozens of Palestinian detainees have died as a result of deliberate medical neglect and ill-treatment. The brutal use of torture methods has also claimed the lives of tens of detainees. Since 7 October 2023, and according to hundreds of testimonies from released detainees, torture, as well as degrading and inhuman treatment, have been practiced on a widespread scale. The exact number of detainees killed under torture remains unknown; however, documentation by the human rights organizations indicates that more than 50 detainees have been killed, while hundreds have been forcibly disappeared, raising serious concerns that many may have been extrajudicially executed during their detention.

Conclusion

Israel presents itself among the states that have abolished the death penalty- at least for ordinary murder crimes- yet it has never fully repealed this inhuman punishment in law, and in practice continues to carry out extrajudicial executions through various means. The enactment of a new law imposing the death penalty exclusively against Palestinians marks a new episode in the ongoing series of oppression and constitutes a grave escalation in Israel’s widespread violations against Palestinians, including hundreds of extrajudicial executions. This law will apply solely to Palestinians, thereby revealing yet another facet of Israel’s apartheid regime, as the death penalty will not be enforced against any Israeli who kills a Palestinian.