Israel passes death penalty law for terrorists convicted of deadly attacks

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s parliament on Monday passed a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, a measure that has been harshly condemned by the international community and rights groups as discriminatory and inhumane.

The passage of the bill marked the culmination of a years-long drive by the far-right to escalate punishment for Palestinians convicted of nationalistic offenses against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the Knesset to vote for the bill in person.

The law makes the death penalty — by hanging — the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges — language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.

It will not apply retroactively to any prisoners Israel currently holds, including the Hamas-led militants who attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

After the final 62-48 vote in favor, lawmakers erupted into cheers and stood up in jubilation. Netanyahu, who remained in his seat, did not immediately react or speak.

Israel's firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who spearheaded the push for the legislation, brandished a bottle in celebration. Far-right lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech, one of the bill’s original sponsors whose first husband was killed in a Palestinian militant attack in the West Bank, smiled through tears.

The legislation, which says it will take effect in 30 days, is certain to face legal challenges that may stall its implementation.

Minutes after the bill passed, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel said it had already petitioned Israel’s highest court to challenge the law. It called the legislation “discriminatory by design” and said the parliament had enacted it “without legal authority” over West Bank Palestinians, who are not Israeli citizens.

Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, said that under international law, Israel’s parliament should not be legislating in the West Bank, which is not sovereign Israeli territory.

Many in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition seek to annex the West Bank to Israel.

The vote capped a daylong debate in the parliament. During earlier deliberations, lawmakers raised other concerns, including how the bill does not allow clemency, contradicting international conventions. Opposition lawmakers at times appeared to plead with their colleagues to vote against the bill.

Before the vote, Ben Gvir described the law as long overdue and a sign of strength and national pride.

“From today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the State of Israel will take their life,” he told lawmakers. On his lapel, he wore a signature pin — a small metal noose.

Gilad Kariv, of the Labor Party, condemned the bill's stipulation that a unanimous judgment is not required to impose the death sentence.

“A law in which a person can be sentenced to death without a unanimous conviction. Is this justice in your eyes? Is this the sanctity of life that Israeli tradition has taught us?” he asked.

The bill contravenes international law, he added, and risks turning Israeli soldiers and prison guards into “war criminals against their will.”

Some, like Aida Sliman of Hadash, the leftist Jewish-Arab political party, left the chamber in dismay before the votes were complete.

Experts say the legislation has two key elements that will effectively limit the death penalty to Palestinians.

First, the bill makes the death penalty a default punishment for nationalistic killings in military courts, which try only West Bank Palestinians and not Israeli citizens. It says that only in special circumstances can military judges change the sentence to life imprisonment.

It gives Israeli civilian courts a greater degree of leniency in sentencing, with judges having the option to choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment.

The second element is how the bill defines the offense punishable by death: killing that rejects the existence of the state of Israel.

“It will apply in Israeli courts, but only to terrorist activities that are motivated by the wish to undermine the existence of Israel. That means Jews will not be indicted under this law,” Cohen said.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy released a statement Sunday urging Israel to abandon plans to pass the law, calling it “de facto discriminatory," and saying the death penalty was unethical and had no “deterring effect.”

Though Israel technically has the death penalty on the books as a possible punishment for acts of genocide, espionage during wartime and certain terror offenses, the country hasn’t put anyone to death since Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

The Public Committee against Torture in Israel says the state has consistently voted in favor of abolishing the death penalty at the U.N. Israel’s Shin Bet’s security agency had — until recently — objected to the practice, believing it could spur further revenge plots by Palestinian militants.

Some opposition lawmakers worry that the bill could harm future hostage negotiations. Israel exchanged some 250 hostages taken during the October 2023 attack for thousands of Palestinian prisoners.

There is a separate bill under consideration dealing with punishment for the Oct. 7, 2023 attackers in Israel's custody.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, March 30, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

US | Army lays groundwork for death row executions if Trump gives approval

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

Texas | Tanner Horner now incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner has now taken up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury last month. Horner is incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state's death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison on May 5 within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a Christmas gift to her home in November 2022.

Alabama | Judge bars nitrogen gas execution, says method is unconstitutionally cruel

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama from executing an inmate with nitrogen gas after declaring it violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks issued the ruling hours after an appeals court reversed her initial finding that the method was constitutional. Marks permanently enjoined the state from executing Jeffrey Lee, 49, by nitrogen gas. He was scheduled to be executed Thursday. The decision, for now, blocks the use of the controversial new execution method that the state has championed since 2024, but the issue will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alabama Plans to Execute Jeffrey Lee Despite Jury Vote for Life

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Texas | Death Row Inmate Gets Resentenced to Life

Harris County district judge recommends compassionate release for Clarence Jordan A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released. Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

Florida executes Andrew Richard Lukehart

Jacksonville man who killed his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby in 1996 executed 30 years later A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter and throwing her body in a pond 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was scheduled to receive a 3-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

Alabama | Judicial Decision About Nitrogen Hypoxia Renders the Constitutional Prohibition of Cruel Punishment Meaningless

On June 11, the state of Alabama plans to execute Jeffrey Lee with nitrogen hypoxia . He will be the ninth person put to death by this method since its first use in 2024. Lee contends that nitrogen hypoxia will cause him great suffering. On May 28, Federal District Judge Emily Marks agreed with him but said his execution could proceed nonetheless. Hers is a remarkable and shockingly candid decision. It made history, coming after the first trial in the country on the constitutionality of nitrogen hypoxia. To her credit, Judge Marks offered an unusually detailed picture of the pain imposed by capital punishment.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog