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Israel’s parliament has backed a controversial bill that seeks to impose a mandatory death sentence on Palestinians who kill Jewish Israelis for nationalist reasons, but not on Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians.
The bill — which was put forward by a member of national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Jewish Power party, and passed by 39 votes to 16 — must clear two more parliamentary votes to become law.
It was voted through amid fractious scenes in the Knesset, with members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and Arab lawmakers trading barbs before three Arab politicians were ejected from the debate.
The version of the bill passed on Monday night calls for Israeli courts to impose the death penalty on those who have caused the death of a citizen of Israel for nationalist reasons “with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land”.
That provision has been widely criticised as meaning that the law would be applied to Palestinians who kill Jewish Israelis, but not to Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians.
The law would also allow Israeli military courts in the West Bank — which Palestinians seek as the heart of a future state but which Israel has occupied for more than half a century — to impose the death penalty by majority instead of unanimity and would remove the possibility of commuting such sentences.
If passed, the law would add to a raft of legislation advanced by Netanyahu’s government — widely regarded as the most rightwing in Israeli history — that human rights groups say is discriminatory and infringes on Palestinians’ rights.
Speaking before the vote, Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist previously convicted of incitement to racism, said the bill would prevent attacks on Israelis.
Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in the Knesset, where the bill was voted through amid fractious scenes © Abir Sultan/EPA/Shutterstock
“Every terrorist should know, and terrorism supporters who were here also know that this law is the law that will deter. This is the law that will make them think a thousand times before they commit another October 7,” he said, referring to Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.
However, the bill has drawn fierce criticism from human rights groups and activists, with a group of nine Palestinian NGOs including Addameer and Al-Haq branding it “a grave escalation in Israel’s widespread violations against Palestinians, including hundreds of extrajudicial executions”.
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It has also come under fire from liberal voices in Israel. In an editorial last week, the Haaretz newspaper warned that the legislation would be “an indelible moral stain and it would further tarnish Israel’s image abroad”.
“A death penalty on the basis of race would be justified grounds for claiming that Israel has racially selective legislation,” the newspaper wrote.
“Moreover, the bill is also meant to make it easier to impose the death penalty in the West Bank and to make it mandatory there as well, with no possibility of leniency. That would violate international law regarding occupied territory.”
Israeli law already allows the imposition of the death penalty for crimes such as treason, but it has very rarely been used in practice.