UN calls on Israel to drop proposed death penalty bill against Palestinians

UN calls on Israel to drop proposed death penalty bill against Palestinians
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UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Friday called on the Israeli government to abandon proposed legislation that would mandate death sentences solely for Palestinians in specific cases, for committed both in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, JURIST NEWS reported.

Türk stated that the proposed legislation is “inconsistent with Israel’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” He delineated specific concerns over the “introduction of mandatory death sentences, which leave no discretion to the courts, and violate the right to life.”

The rights chief noted that the proposals contravene international humanitarian law, emphasizing that Israel has frequently violated the fair trial protections enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention for Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, and adding that this “amounts to a war crime.”

Türk also criticized the legislation’s “effect of applying the death penalty retroactively to those convicted of killings related to the horrific attacks on 7 October 2023, in violation of the principle of legality enshrined in international law.” Article 6(2) of the ICCPR states that a death sentence may be imposed only “in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime.”

On November 10, the Knesset plenum approved in its first reading the Penal Law Bill (Amendment No. 159) (Death Penalty for Terrorists) 2025, sponsored by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech. The proposed amendments to the military law governing the occupied West Bank require military courts to impose mandatory death sentences for all convictions for intentional killing in the territory. An Israel Prison Service (IPS) guard is to administer the death penalty through gunshot, electric chair, hanging or lethal injection.

Despite Israel’s 1991 ratification of the UN Convention against Torture, the nation has not yet codified a domestic statute that defines or criminalizes torture. Joel Zivot, a senior fellow in ethics at Emory University, commented that the execution of convicted Palestinians by lethal injection would constitute a cruel, torturous, and—under existing Israeli law—unlawful death.