Israel’s death penalty law constitutes discriminatory regime of capital punishment: UN experts
Israel’s new law effectively providing for the death penalty solely against Palestinians constitutes a discriminatory regime of capital punishment and manifestly violates Israel’s obligations under international human rights law, UN experts* said today.
“We condemn the Knesset’s adoption of this law and call for its immediate repeal,” the experts said. “This law marks a grave escalation in Israel’s discriminatory oppression of Palestinians.”
“A death penalty regime that is discriminatory in purpose, design or effect is incompatible with the rights to life and equality before the law,” they warned.
Other aspects of the legislation, including military trials of civilians, systemic due process violations, and execution by hanging make it irreconcilable with the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the experts said.
“By reintroducing capital punishment in a system that targets solely Palestinians, despite Israel’s prior abolition of the death penalty for murder and its long-standing de facto moratorium on executions, this law institutionalises arbitrary and discriminatory deprivation of life,” they said.
As the experts previously warned,** the legislation preserves and intensifies a dual legal system under which Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are subjected to military law, military courts, and diminished due process guarantees, while Israeli settlers are not.
“A law that effectively singles out Palestinians for execution conveys that Palestinian lives are less worthy of legal protection,” they said.
“In the context of unlawful occupation and a wider system of racial segregation and apartheid, arbitrary detention, torture, deaths in custody and unlawful killings, the enactment of an official threat of execution is itself a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and heightens the risk of arbitrary deprivation of life.”
“The Knesset has now adopted this law in open disregard of our repeated warnings that it violates Israel’s obligations under international law,” the experts said.
The experts pointed to the wider legal and institutional context, after the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s legislation and measures in the occupied Palestinian territory violate the prohibition of racial segregation and apartheid.
“A system of capital punishment imposed on Palestinians within that wider regime of domination, separation and discriminatory subjugation cannot be rendered lawful by formal safeguards or nominal judicial discretion,” they said. “A death penalty regime applied to Palestinians cannot satisfy the requirements of non-discrimination, strict legality and fair trial under international law.”
Mandatory death sentences are inherently arbitrary and under international law —including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Israel in 1991. Capital punishment may be imposed only for the most serious crimes, after fair proceedings, and with access to pardon or commutation.
“These legal requirements are clearly violated when the death penalty is applied discriminatorily and civilians are tried before military courts that fail to meet international fair trial standards,” the experts warned.
“Israel must immediately repeal this law and refrain from its implementation, by seeking, imposing or carrying out death sentences under its provisions,” they said.
“We call on the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, to invalidate this manifestly unlawful legislation without delay, before it gives rise to irreversible harm and further entrenches discrimination, arbitrariness and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment against Palestinians.”
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