By: Dr. Haytham Muneir Ereifej
Jordan Daily - Israel’s latest legislation has stripped away, once again, the last pretense that it is a state governed by equal law. On 30 March 2026, the Knesset passed a law mandating the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks, by a vote of 62 to 48, with executions to be carried out within 90 days in most cases. This is not a technical amendment. It is a legislative declaration that Palestinian life is valued differently under Israeli rule.
The law is racist not simply because it is severe, but because of how it operates. In practice, it is designed to target Palestinians tried under Israel’s military court system in the occupied West Bank, while equivalent violence by Jewish Israelis does not face the same legal framework. That destroys any claim of equality before the law. What Israel has enacted is not justice. It is selective punishment grounded in national identity.
The international legal position is clear. On 2 January 2026, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned that proposals to impose mandatory death sentences exclusively on Palestinians “fly in the face of international law on several levels.” On 4 February 2026, UN experts urged Israel to withdraw the bill, warning that it violates the right to life and discriminates against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory. After the law was passed, Türk again called for its immediate repeal, citing its discriminatory character and its incompatibility with international humanitarian and human rights law.
This matters because the law does not exist in a vacuum. In its 19 July 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory involve unlawful discrimination, including conduct contrary to the prohibition of racial segregation and apartheid. The new death penalty law is not an exception to that system. It is one of its clearest expressions: one legal order for the occupier, another for the occupied.
History has seen this before. Apartheid was never maintained by force alone. It was maintained by legislation that assigned different rights, protections, and punishments to different groups. That is exactly why this law must be called what it is: racism by statute. No parliament can turn discrimination into justice merely by voting for it.
This law does not prove Israel’s strength. It proves its legal and moral bankruptcy. A state that claims to respect law does not legislate death on the basis of identity, nor allow an occupying power to become prosecutor, judge, and executioner over the very people it subjugates. Israel’s defenders may celebrate this law as deterrence. The rest of the world should recognize it for what it is: a racist measure that exposes, yet again, the deep falsehood behind Israel’s claims of democracy, legality, and civilized restraint.
