Israel's Death Penalty Law: Execution as Policy

The Israeli Knesset approved legislation yesterday that will allow courts to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks. The law permits executions by hanging and removes critical procedural protections: courts can impose death sentences without a request from prosecutors, and unanimous jury decisions are no longer required—simple majority suffices.

Military courts in the occupied West Bank will also be empowered to hand down death sentences, with the defence minister able to submit opinions. For Palestinians under occupation, the bill closes off avenues for appeal or clemency.

The measure applies specifically to homicides intended to 'negate the existence of the State of Israel'—a formulation that effectively targets Palestinians while exempting Jewish Israelis from the same punishment.

Celebraton of Death: The Noose, The Bottle, The Bellowing Speech

When the Knesset voted on March 30, the chamber erupted into cheers as the death penalty law passed. Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the law's chief architect, celebrated by brandishing a bottle—reportedly champagne—and drinking with fellow lawmakers. Photos from the Knesset captured Ben-Gvir wearing his signature golden noose-shaped lapel pin, a grotesque symbol he has adopted to champion state execution of Palestinians.

"From today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the State of Israel will take their life," Ben-Gvir bellowed from the podium before the vote, sporting a golden noose pin that has become his trademark. He described the measure as "long overdue" and "a sign of strength and national pride."

The display of death as celebratory—waving bottles, toasting executions, wearing a noose like jewelry—came as the death penalty law was approved. While Palestinian prisoners face torture, sexual violence, and the prospect of state execution, Israel's leadership marked the occasion with a party.

Palestinians protest at the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza City on March 31, 2026, against Israeli military court death penalty rulings.

Torture as State Doctrine

This legislation arrives as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, warns that Israel's systematic torture of Palestinians has become a 'defining instrument of ongoing genocide.'

'Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,' Albanese stated in her new report to the UN Human Rights Council. 'Torture, long shielded by decades of impunity and political cover, has become a defining instrument of ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory.'

The escalation of torture in Israeli detention centres is not random but coordinated. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israel Prison Service, has promoted his 'prison revolution'—a policy that explicitly institutionalizes degradation as a method of breaking Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli soldiers and police clashed with right-wing activists who broke into the Bayt Lid army base over the detention of reservists suspected of abusing a detainee after the Oct. 7 attacks, July 29, 2024.

Systemic Abuse and Sexual Violence

Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem released a report in August 2024 documenting systematic Israeli abuse, torture, sexual violence, and rape of Palestinian detainees. The report called the Israeli prison system a 'network of torture camps' and included extensive testimonies from Palestinians who have survived Israeli detention.

Reports detail horrific abuse: prisoners sodomized with knives, beaten into unconsciousness, denied medical care, subjected to stress positions, solitary confinement, and psychological torture. Even cases documented by Israeli authorities have resulted in dropped charges—five Israeli officials were identified and pressed with charges over the rape of a prisoner with a knife; those charges were later dropped.

More than half of Palestinian child detainees are being held without charge, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. Children face the same torture regime as adults: sexual violence, beatings, humiliation, and denial of basic rights.

A prison stands blind folded against a razor wire fence in Sde Teiman

Israel’s Secret Prisons

Camp 1391: Israel's Guantanamo

Beyond the publicly acknowledged prison system, Israel operates a network of secret detention facilities. Camp 1391, referred to by some as 'the Israeli Guantanamo,' was kept so secret that even David Libai, Minister of Justice in Yitzhak Rabin's government, was unaware of its existence.

According to accounts of former captives, detainees at Camp 1391 were led into the facility blindfolded and kept in 2 meter by 2 meter cells with no natural light. The facility operates as a black site—detained without legal representation, without family contact, without the possibility of habeas corpus.

Sde Teiman: The New Guantanamo Bay

Sde Teiman detention camp, established during the Gaza war, has been dubbed 'Israel's Guantánamo Bay.' The camp allows the Israel Defense Forces to detain people without an arrest warrant for 45 days, after which detainees must be transferred to the Israel Prison Service.

Alice Jill Edwards, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Unlawful Combatants, has called for investigations into Sde Teiman and condemned the alleged sexual abuse as 'particularly gruesome.' Reports from the camp describe the same patterns of torture, humiliation, and systematic abuse documented across the Israeli prison system.

Imprisonment of Children

Tel Mond

Tel Mond primarily houses younger Palestinian boys under 16, often in sections 7 and 8 shared with Israeli juvenile criminals. Conditions include poor ventilation, inedible food, inadequate sanitation, lack of education, and punitive transfers as punishment for protests, with violence like razor attacks by other inmates reported. Forced labor has also been alleged in older accounts.

Ofer

Ofer, a military facility near Ramallah, detains Palestinian children alongside adults, with reports of iron shackles, handcuffing, and human rights concerns raised by international delegations. As of December 2024, it held some of the 345 total Palestinian child detainees across Ofer, Damon, and Megiddo. Practices include strip searches, stress positions, and interrogations without lawyers.

Megiddo

Palestinian boys aged 16-17, treated as adults upon arrest, and includes a juvenile section for younger minors. Reports describe systematic torture allegations including beatings, starvation, medical neglect, and pressure to collaborate with authorities, with at least two child deaths noted there in early 2025. As of late 2024, it detained over 100 children amid broader overcrowding.

Death by Law: Elimination by Other Means

The death penalty law is not an isolated measure—it is the legislative expression of a broader project: the destruction of Palestinian society. As the UN report states, the practices in Israeli prisons operate as 'an ideological project of societal destruction, normalizing cruelty and with the political objective of debilitating the Palestinian 'nation.'

When torture is state doctrine, when secret prisons exist beyond the reach of law, when children are detained without charge and subjected to sexual violence, when legal protections are stripped away one by one—death by execution is simply elimination by other means.

The world watches. The machinery of death grinds on.