DEMOCRACY WATCHIsrael’s Death Penalty Law Has Little to Do with Criminal Justice and Everything to Do with Ethno‑Nationalism
Under a law passed by the Israeli parliament on March 30, 2026, death by hanging will now become the default sentence for some offenses – but only in effect when the crime is carried out by Palestinians. Scholars of comparative authoritarianism have long identified the selective application of harsh criminal penalties as a hallmark of illiberal governance.
In its nearly 80-year history, the state of Israel has carried out only one court-sanctioned execution: Adolf Eichmann, a principal architect of the Nazi holocaust.
But under a law passed by the Israeli parliament on March 30, 2026, that restraint has been thrown out the window.
Death by hanging will now become the default sentence for some offenses – but only in effect when the crime is carried out by Palestinians.
The law establishes two distinct judicial tracks. For the first, civilian courts in Israel may sentence defendants to death when convicted of killing with intent to “negate the existence of the State of Israel.” Meanwhile, military courts in the occupied West Bank must impose death for killings classified as terrorism, with life sentences permitted only in unspecified “exceptional cases.”
The bill, which also indicated that executions under the military track must be carried out within 90 days, passed by a vote of 62-48, with all major parties in the ruling governing coalition voting in favor.
The move further entrenches a two-tiered legal system in which Palestinians in the West Bank are tried exclusively in military courts – tribunals with an approximately 96% conviction rate, based largely on confessions often extracted under coercive conditions.
As someone who has been studying political violence and extremism in Israel for more than 20 years, I believe that treating this law as merely another chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would miss its deeper significance. Rather, the passing of the death penalty bill is best understood as part of the consolidation of ethno-nationalist ideology in governance, the continued erosion of institutional constraints on state power and the legal codification of retributive policies directed overwhelmingly at Palestinians.
The Long Arc of Institutional Capture
Proponents of the law focus on its purported deterrence effect and its potential use to prevent unpopular exchanges of convicted Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages. One such exchange – the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, in which over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for a single Israeli soldier – included the release of Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar, who later masterminded the attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
However, some senior Israeli security officials, including representatives from the Israel Defense Forces and the intelligence service Shin Bet, dispute these claims, arguing that there is no evidence capital punishment deters terrorism.
