Israeli occupation army minister Yisrael Katz and the extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir announced the beginning of procedures to implement Israel’s new death penalty law targeting Palestinian detainees in the occupied West Bank.
The announcement came after the commander of the Israeli occupation army’s Central Command, Avi Blot, signed an amendment to a special military order that governs the occupied West Bank.
The development highlights that the Knesset’s approval of the law was not sufficient on its own to apply it in West Bank. Palestinians in the occupied territory are not subject to Israel’s civilian legal system but to a separate framework of military orders and military courts.
As a result, the Israeli government was required to amend what it calls the “Security Instructions Order” to enable military courts operating in the occupied West Bank to impose the death penalty.
The amendment was issued under Katz’s direction, following the Knesset’s approval last month of the law initiated by Ben‑Gvir and his far‑right Otzma Yehudit party.
In their joint statement, Katz and Ben‑Gvir said the law targets those Israel describes as “terrorists” accused of killing Jews, language that underscores the political and ethnonational character of the legislation.
Katz stated that “the era of containment is over,” adding that anyone who kills Jews “will not wait for prisoner‑exchange deals and will not dream of release.”
Ben‑Gvir said the government “promised and delivered,” and claimed that anyone who carries out a killing against Jews “must know that his fate will be the death penalty, not a release deal.”
Human rights organizations have emphasized that the law is designed exclusively for Palestinians and does not apply to Israelis, including Israeli soldiers or illegal paramilitary colonizers involved in the killing of Palestinian civilians.
Israeli courts have never imposed the death penalty on any Israeli citizen for killing a Palestinian, even in cases where Israeli courts acknowledged deliberate murder, such as the kidnapping and burning alive of 16‑year‑old Mohammad Abu Khdeir, the arson attack that killed members of the Dawabsha family in Duma, or numerous filmed executions at military roadblocks and during home invasions.
The new law therefore reinforces a dual legal system in which Palestinians face military courts empowered to impose execution, while Israelis who kill Palestinians remain under civilian courts that routinely issue lenient sentences, plea bargains, or full acquittals.
The move carries broader implications beyond a technical legal amendment. It transfers a Knesset‑approved law into the West Bank through military orders and grants Israeli military courts the authority to impose death sentences in what Israel classifies as “security cases.”
It also opens the door to extensive legal and human‑rights criticism, particularly given that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are tried before military courts that maintain a conviction rate exceeding 99 percent, rather than any civilian judicial system.
On March 30, the Israeli Knesset passed the death penalty law for Palestinian prisoners in its second and third readings.
