Israel's parliament voted Monday night to make death by hanging the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of fatal attacks against Israelis, a law that its far-right sponsors celebrated with champagne on the Knesset floor and that rights groups immediately challenged in court. The measure passed 62-48, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coming to the chamber to vote yes in person. He did not speak afterward. He sat motionless as the room erupted around him.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who had spent months wearing a small gold noose on his lapel to promote the legislation, brandished a bottle in celebration. "We made history," he posted on social media minutes after the vote. Far-right lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech, whose first husband was killed in a Palestinian militant attack in the West Bank, wiped tears from her eyes.

The law is not retroactive. It will not apply to any of the Hamas-led attackers currently held by Israel from the October 7, 2023 assault. A separate bill addressing punishment for those prisoners is under consideration. The legislation takes effect in 30 days, though legal challenges are expected to delay implementation.

Israel has executed only two people in its history. The first, army officer Meir Tobianski, was falsely accused of espionage and put to death in 1948. He was posthumously exonerated. The second was Adolf Eichmann, a central architect of the Nazi Holocaust, executed in 1962.

What the Law Says

The bill operates on two tracks. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, military courts — which try only Palestinians, not Israeli citizens — must now impose the death penalty as the default sentence for anyone convicted of killing an Israeli "as an act of terror." Life imprisonment can be substituted only in unspecified "special circumstances," reversing the longstanding practice in which death sentences handed down by military courts were routinely commuted on appeal.

Unanimous agreement among judges is no longer required. A simple majority will suffice. Executions must be carried out by hanging within 90 days, with a possible delay of up to 180 days. There is no right to clemency.

In Israeli civilian courts, which try Israeli citizens including Palestinian citizens of Israel, judges can choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment for murders committed "with the intent of rejecting the existence of the state of Israel."

Legal scholars say this distinction is the core of the bill's discriminatory design. Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said the civilian court language effectively excludes Jewish Israelis from the death penalty while capturing Palestinian citizens of Israel. "It will apply in Israeli courts, but only to terrorist activities that are motivated by the wish to undermine the existence of Israel," Cohen said. "That means Jews will not be indicted under this law."

Cohen also noted that under international law, the Israeli parliament has no jurisdiction to legislate in the West Bank, which is not sovereign Israeli territory. Many in Netanyahu's coalition seek to annex it.

Immediate Legal Challenge

Within minutes of the vote, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the law. The organization called the legislation "unconstitutional, discriminatory by design and — for West Bank Palestinians — enacted without legal authority."

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said military courts in the West Bank carry a 96 percent conviction rate and rely heavily on confessions obtained under coercion and torture. The group's executive director, Yuli Novak, said before the vote that "Israel is reaching a new low in the dehumanization of Palestinians, enshrining their cruel treatment in state law."

A Knesset legal adviser, Ido Ben-Itzhak, had warned during earlier deliberations that the bill's lack of clemency provisions contradicts international conventions. Israel's own Shin Bet security agency had until recently opposed the death penalty on the grounds that executions could provoke retaliatory attacks.

The Supreme Court has the authority to review and potentially overturn the law. Whether it will do so — and on what timeline — remains uncertain.

International Condemnation

The day before the vote, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy released a joint statement expressing "deep concern" and warning that the bill risked "undermining Israel's commitments with regard to democratic principles." Australia's foreign minister joined the statement as well.

The UN Human Rights Office in Palestine called on Israel to "immediately repeal the discriminatory death penalty law," stating that it violates international law's prohibition on cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. UN experts had urged Israel to withdraw the bill weeks earlier, warning it contained vague definitions of "terrorist" that could result in the death penalty for conduct that "is not genuinely terrorist."

Amnesty International called the law "a public display of cruelty, discrimination and utter contempt for human rights" and noted there is no evidence the death penalty deters crime more effectively than life imprisonment. The Council of Europe's secretary-general called the measure a "serious regression" incompatible with contemporary human rights standards.

The EU's diplomatic service said the legislation breaches the right to life and risks violating the absolute prohibition on torture. Ireland's foreign minister said she was "particularly concerned about the de facto discriminatory nature of the bill as it relates to Palestinians."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the law as a breach of international law. "Such laws and measures will not break the will of the Palestinian people or undermine their steadfastness," his office said. Hamas and Islamic Jihad went further, calling on Palestinians to launch attacks in retaliation.

The Politics Behind the Bill

Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party drove the legislation from the start. The far-right minister, who was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement against Arabs and support for the Kach movement — listed as a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States — made the death penalty for Palestinian militants a central pledge of his 2022 campaign. He described hanging as "one of the options" for execution, alongside the electric chair or "euthanasia," claiming some doctors had volunteered to assist.

Critics view the timing through the lens of Israel's upcoming October 2026 national elections. Opposition lawmaker Gilad Kariv of the Labor Party called the bill "an extreme, crude, immoral and irrational election campaign" by Ben-Gvir. Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, said the law was "an unnecessary piece of legislation designed to get Ben-Gvir more likes" and predicted it would lead to international sanctions.

Netanyahu asked for some provisions to be softened to blunt international backlash, Israeli media reported. The revised bill added the option of life imprisonment in civilian courts, whereas the original text had mandated death for all non-Israeli citizens convicted in military courts of fatal attacks. But Netanyahu ultimately voted yes, alongside 61 other members of his coalition.

Son Har-Melech, who survived the 2001 attack that killed her husband, argued the law was necessary to break what she called a "cruel cycle" in which convicted attackers are eventually released in prisoner exchanges and go on to commit further violence. One of her husband's killers, she said, was later involved in the October 7 attacks.

Some 54 countries worldwide still permit the death penalty, including the United States and Japan. The global trend, according to Amnesty International, is toward abolition, with 113 nations having outlawed it.

Israel has now joined the short list of democracies that execute. Whether the Supreme Court lets the law stand — and whether any execution is actually carried out — will determine whether Monday's vote marks a historic turning point or a political gesture that never survives judicial review.