Human Rights and Civil Society Organizations in Israel: Israel’s Death Penalty Law Institutionalizes Discrimination and Racist Violence against Palestinians

Monday, March 30, 2026

Today, the Israeli Knesset voted a new, draconian death penalty bill into law by a majority of 62 to 48.  In response, a coalition of human rights and civil society organizations in Israel issued the following statement:

Israel’s new death penalty law constitutes an official stamp of approval on a policy of vengeance and racist violence against Palestinians. All forms of the death penalty are cruel, inhumane, and violate the right to life. But the law approved today is particularly egregious: it targets Palestinians while exempting Israelis; it tramples on the principle of due process; and it undermines the possibility of discovering judicial errors or false confessions, including confessions extracted under torture.

This law runs counter to the global trend of abolishing the death penalty in the majority of countries worldwide. The imposition of the death penalty violates international law, including Israel’s obligations under the Laws of Occupation, and in some cases may constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Global experience shows that the death penalty does not deter, and even Israeli security officials say it may increase the risks of hostage-taking and retaliatory operations.

Israel’s far-right government coalition exploited the current state of emergency to rush this law through critical legislative stages, ignoring broad opposition within civil society, among the political opposition and even from Israeli military and legal officials. At a time of widespread torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners, unfathomable destruction and devastation in Gaza, deadly escalation against Iran and Lebanon, and rampant violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank — this law escalates the cycle of violence and carries dire political and security consequences.

The passage of the death penalty law is yet another expression of the moral nadir to which the State of Israel and its legal system have sunk. We call on citizens to raise their voice and act by every legal means to prevent this law’s implementation. We call on states throughout the world to take practical steps to prevent the creation of this machinery of death.

For further information, see our briefing paper.Signatory Organizations: Adalah, B’Tselem, HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, Parents Against Child Detention, Physicians for Human Rights, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Zazim