Overview
- The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which issued its warning Friday, said the law is racially discriminatory and urged Israel to repeal it immediately.
- The statute makes death by hanging the default sentence for defined terrorism killings tried in Israeli military courts that prosecute Palestinians, while Israeli citizens and residents are excluded.
- The committee flagged a 90-day deadline to carry out executions and an explicit ban on mitigation, commutation, or pardon, raising concerns about fair-trial safeguards.
- The panel said the measure ends Israel’s de facto halt on executions since 1962 and noted that the state has carried out only two executions in its history.
- The committee also urged other governments to withhold resources that would help enforce the policy, citing rising detentions and reports of settler violence across the occupied territory.