Israel’s death penalty law marks a new phase in its dehumanisation of Palestinians | Yuli Novak

This week, Israel passed a law that institutionalises the execution of Palestinians. The country’s courts can now impose death sentences on Palestinians “convicted of fatal attacks”, expanding a legal system designed to target them, strip them of rights, subject them to systematic abuse, and, ultimately, shield Israeli perpetrators of crimes against Palestinians from accountability. While this legislation does not create a whole new reality, it marks the beginning of a troubling new phase of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians by enshrining into law a longstanding policy of using lethal force against them. Disturbingly, this reality is already normalised in Israel.

Long before this law, Palestinians were being systematically killed. In Gaza, mass killing has continued even after the declaration of a “ceasefire”. In the West Bank, Palestinians are killed on a daily basis by the Israeli military in raids, shootings and, increasingly, by violent settler militias aimed at driving them from their land and out of their communities. For some time, Israeli soldiers and settlers have been able to act with near-total impunity.

The same reality has been starkly visible in Israel’s prison network. In the months since October 2023, Israel has increased the number of Palestinians in its detention system to more than 10,000, many of them without trial, with no meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. They are held in conditions that in effect turn Israel’s prison system into a network of torture camps, where Palestinians are subjected to systematic violence, abuse and deliberate starvation.

More than 80 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody during this period amid documented abuse, inhumane conditions and denial of medical treatment. The new law does not break from this system; it extends it, embedding its logic more deeply in the legal framework. Now, many more Palestinians will legally die in detention. This law emerges under a political leadership that openly embraces violence and dehumanisation, led by senior government ministers who have built their power on incitement and the normalisation of harm against Palestinians. Its promotion in the media has featured rhetoric that glorifies killing, including discussions that veered into graphic and disturbingly callous descriptions of executions – reflecting a broader societal shift in which Palestinian lives are increasingly seen as expendable.

As B’Tselem showed in its 2025 report Our Genocide, the dehumanisation of Palestinians is a long-term process. That process helps explain how a law such as this becomes both imaginable and acceptable to large parts of Israeli society. The legislation faces virtually no political opposition and hardly provokes public debate in Israel.

Globally, democratic states have been moving away from the death penalty, recognising it as a violation of fundamental human rights, both domestically and internationally. At a time when international law itself is under growing attack, Israel is not an exception but a central driver of this erosion – maintaining systems of lethal violence and oppression against Palestinians and embedding them more deeply within its legal framework. Israel still presents itself as a democracy, but a state that institutionalises the execution of one population under its control while subjecting it to systemic violence and discrimination is not democratic; it is a system of lethal control.

All of this is already plainly visible. The debate is not about facts. It is about recognising Israel for what it is: a state that systematically kills Palestinians with impunity and erodes international law and basic moral norms. What is happening to Palestinians is already reshaping political and moral boundaries beyond Palestine, including in the US. As this is tolerated, it spreads. Once the dismantling of international law and basic protections for human life is accepted in one place, it becomes far easier to justify everywhere.

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