Overview
- The Knesset approved the measure 62–48 on Monday, making death by hanging the default sentence in military courts for West Bank Palestinians convicted of killing.
- The statute takes effect in 30 days and is not retroactive, sets a 90‑day window to carry out executions, lowers the judicial threshold from unanimity to a majority, and sharply limits clemency and appeals.
- Israel’s Association for Civil Rights has petitioned the Supreme Court to strike the law, and additional challenges by legal scholars and rights groups are pending that could delay implementation.
- U.N. rights chief Volker Türk urged repeal and warned that executions in the occupied West Bank would constitute a war crime, while the European Union and several European governments condemned the law as discriminatory.
- Protests erupted in Jerusalem and across West Bank cities as critics noted that Palestinians are tried largely in Israeli military courts and argue the new rules will, in practice, apply almost exclusively to them.