Introduction
The law providing for the death penalty for Palestinians, officially titled the “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law”, adopted by the Knesset, signals a significant shift in the logic of governance employed by Israel toward Palestinians. The significance of this development lies in the political and social context in which it has emerged—a context in which the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict is increasingly framed in terms of security, threat, and the elimination of Palestinians. Within such an environment, the death penalty functions as more than merely a means of punishing an individual convicted of a crime; it also carries a political, security-related, and symbolic message. Under this law, Palestinians—particularly residents of the occupied territory who fall under the jurisdiction of Israeli military courts—are represented not simply as defendants in individual criminal cases, but within a broader framework of security threats. This indicates that legislation in this area has moved beyond the sphere of criminal punishment and has become part of the securitization of the Palestinian population.
When securitization is institutionalized through law, it can acquire a different and more forceful function. The adoption of such legislation amid the expansion of the far right, escalating violence, and intensified security operations against Palestinians indicates that Israel’s political structure is increasingly moving toward the use of law as an instrument of intimidation and control. The critical question, however, is whether such policies are genuinely capable of producing security and deterrence, or whether, on the contrary, they contribute to deepening the cycle of violence, intensifying collective anger, and closing off avenues for political resolution.
Securitization Theory
Securitization theory, developed by the Copenhagen School in the field of international relations, holds that an issue becomes securitized when political actors present it as an immediate existential threat and the relevant audience accepts that extraordinary measures, extending beyond the bounds of normal politics, are necessary to address it. Within this framework, securitization is a political process through which language, institutions, and official decisions move an issue from the domain of ordinary political debate and management into the realm of emergency, control, and repression. In such circumstances, states typically invoke concepts such as national security, counterterrorism, the preservation of public order, or the need to confront an existential threat in order to justify policies that would encounter greater resistance under ordinary conditions. Examples of this process can be seen in the expansion of counterterrorism legislation after 11 September, the extensive use of security-related detention, restrictions on protests in the name of public order, stringent border controls targeting migrants and asylum seekers, and military responses to groups that are, in fact, part of broader political or social crises. In all these cases, the central issue is that a particular group or form of conduct is removed from the category of a manageable problem and repositioned as a threat to be suppressed. One consequence of this process is that the language of security comes to prevail over the language of rights, politics, and society, while measures such as prolonged detention, extensive surveillance, special judicial proceedings, severe restrictions, and harsh punishments are presented as security necessities.
The Israeli Knesset’s law providing for the death penalty for Palestinians can likewise be understood within this framework, as it portrays the issue of Palestinian prisoners and defendants not as an individual matter of criminal justice, but as part of the broader “war on terrorism.” In an official Knesset announcement, the legislation was described as “another tool in the war on terrorism,” with its stated purpose being to enhance deterrence and prevent future attacks. This language itself demonstrates that the underlying logic of the law is more security-oriented than judicial. Human rights organizations have emphasized that, in practice, the provisions concerning the military court system will primarily affect Palestinians. Under the law, the death penalty is the prescribed sentence for a person falling within the scope of these provisions, and a military court may impose life imprisonment instead only where it finds that “special circumstances” justify doing so. Moreover, once a death sentence has been imposed within this framework, the commander of the military forces in the area will have no authority to pardon, mitigate, or commute the sentence. Against the backdrop of longstanding concerns raised by international bodies regarding fair-trial guarantees in the military court system—particularly effective access to legal counsel and the possibility of remedying judicial errors—these provisions assume even greater significance.
For Palestinians subject to the legal regime of occupation, this situation also raises concerns under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 75 of the Convention provides that a person sentenced to death may not be deprived of the right to petition for pardon or reprieve, and, except in the exceptional circumstances specified in that same provision, a death sentence may not be carried out before the expiry of a period of at least six months.
According to Human Rights Watch, the law mandates execution by hanging, restricts access to legal counsel and visits by family members, limits external oversight, and grants immunity to those involved in carrying out executions. This indicates that securitization in this context is neither general nor neutral; rather, it is directed at a particular population that has already been defined in terms of threat and is increasingly placed within a security framework whose consequences for the accused are irreversible. In such a setting, a Palestinian defendant is viewed less as an individual bearing responsibility for a specific act and more as part of a collective security threat. Consequently, the death penalty is transformed from a response to an individual criminal case into an instrument for intensifying control and intimidation and for reframing the Palestinian conflict as a security threat. From this perspective, the death penalty law exemplifies the transformation of the Palestinian political question into a security issue—one for which the prescribed response is not political accommodation, but harsher punishment.
The consequences of this process can be examined at three levels: the transformation of the death penalty into an instrument for the display of political authority; the question of the effectiveness and deterrent capacity of coercive measures; and, finally, the impact of the predominance of security logic on the possibility of returning the Palestinian question to the sphere of political dialogue and accommodation.
Execution as a Display of Power
Under this law, execution appears to function not merely as a criminal punishment, but also as a form of display of political power. The law’s passage in the Knesset by an explicit majority, with the support of figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggests that the measure resembles an assertion of the state’s sovereign position toward Palestinians. This is particularly significant because the law was adopted in a political environment in which, following the events of 7 October, the Palestinian question has increasingly been represented in official Israeli discourse through concepts such as threat, terrorism, and the necessity of a forceful response. This gives the law a function extending beyond that of an ordinary criminal-justice measure.
The official language used to justify the law likewise reflects this logic. Official statements described it as “another tool in the war on terrorism” and presented its purpose as strengthening deterrence and reducing the incentive to carry out future attacks. Such language shifts execution from the sphere of a judicial sentence into that of a security and wartime instrument. Within this framework, the state seeks to demonstrate that it possesses not only the capacity to arrest, prosecute, and imprison Palestinians, but also the power to formalize their ultimate elimination through law. Execution therefore also conveys a political message—one intended to display the authority of the Israeli state and its governing institutions, their punitive power, and their capacity to exercise control.
This message appears to have three principal audiences. For Palestinians, it carries a message of threat and intimidation. For Israeli domestic public opinion, it is presented as evidence of governmental resolve and authority in confronting perceived threats. For the international community, it may be understood as a declaration of disregard for human-rights pressure and criticism.
This dimension of the death penalty as a display of power becomes even more apparent when the role of far-right political forces in advancing the legislation is taken into account. Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party promoted the law in terms extending well beyond cautious legal language, employing openly threatening and symbolic rhetoric. Reports have referred, for example, to the use of a noose-shaped pin during the campaign surrounding the law’s adoption. Likewise, at a birthday celebration held for the far-right minister, a noose was depicted on the birthday cake, together with the words: “Congratulations, Minister Ben-Gvir. Sometimes dreams come true.”
Such symbols create the impression in the public mind that execution has become a means of political mobilization, a mechanism for stimulating domestic public opinion, and a symbol of resolve against Palestinians. From this perspective, rather than being grounded primarily in rehabilitation, justice, or efforts to address the underlying causes of the conflict, the law relies on the production of fear, the communication of a message of retribution, and the reinforcement by Israel’s governing authorities of the image of a powerful state.
Reports and reactions from the United Nations and human rights organizations are also significant from this perspective. Human rights critics have challenged the law because of its discriminatory impact on Palestinians. This effect is particularly evident in the provisions governing the military court system, from which Israeli citizens and residents are explicitly excluded. The provisions applicable to the civilian court system within Israel, by contrast, have a different structure and scope.
The Crisis of Deterrence
Although coercive measures against Palestinian communities have long been employed, and although, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the conviction rate of Palestinians before Israeli military courts in the West Bank is approximately 96 percent, one of the central questions surrounding the death penalty law for Palestinians is whether such legislation can in fact produce a meaningful deterrent effect or whether it merely adds another layer to already existing punitive policies.
The experience of several decades of conflict between Palestinians and Israel suggests that military pressure, mass arrests, home demolitions, blockades, restrictions on movement, the expansion of settlements, and stringent security policies have not eliminated Palestinian demands for the restoration of their lost rights. Such measures may, in the short term, increase the costs of political action or resistance, but they do not necessarily extinguish demands for justice, the right to self-determination, and an end to the occupation. On the contrary, in many instances, intensified pressure has reinforced a collective memory of suffering, perceptions of injustice, and political motivations among Palestinians. From this perspective, the Palestinian question is rooted not merely in security concerns, but in a historical experience of deprivation, displacement, occupation, and inequality.
The death penalty law faces a similar crisis of effectiveness. Its supporters present it as an instrument of deterrence, yet empirical research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment has produced no consistent findings, and the available evidence does not provide a sufficiently reliable scientific basis for concluding that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect than severe alternative punishments. Moreover, in political and identity-based conflicts such as the Palestinian case, harsh punishments may produce the opposite result, transforming the person executed into a symbol of victimhood, resistance, or injustice within collective memory.
For example, Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Atta al-Zir were executed in 1930 in the British colonial prison in Acre in connection with the disturbances known as the 1929 al-Buraq uprising, yet they subsequently became enduring symbols in the history of Palestinian struggle. A song entitled “Min Sijn ‘Akka” (“From Acre Prison”) was composed and circulated in their memory. The Palestinian poet Ibrahim Tuqan likewise commemorated the three men in his poem “Red Tuesday”, referring to “their bodies in the graves of the homeland and their souls in heaven.”
In another case, the Indian anti-colonial revolutionary Bhagat Singh, who was executed by the British authorities in 1931, became after his death a martyr-like figure in Indian national memory and a symbol of resistance to colonial rule.
It therefore appears unlikely that a law which, in practice, targets Palestinians will be capable of eliminating the underlying roots of grievance, anger, and political demands. Such legislation may project an image of resolve to segments of Israeli domestic public opinion, but at the level of the conflict itself, it is unlikely to produce a lasting reduction in tensions. It may even deepen the divide between the two sides by intensifying perceptions of discrimination and injustice and by further transforming the Palestinian prisoner into a political symbol.
From this perspective, the deterrence crisis inherent in the death penalty law lies precisely in its attempt to contain, through an instrument of elimination, a problem whose roots are political, historical, and collective.
The Closing of the Horizon for Political Compromise
Beyond its criminal and security implications, the death penalty law for Palestinians also undermines the prospects for any form of political compromise. Compromise becomes meaningful only when the opposing side is recognized not as a threat to be eliminated, but as a political actor entitled to participate in dialogue. While many European and Arab governments, as well as international institutions, continue to present the two-state solution as the ultimate framework for resolving the Palestinian question, this law moves in precisely the opposite direction. When a political population is subjected, through formal legislation, to a targeted and discriminatory form of capital punishment, the implicit message is that the Palestinian question is treated solely as a security threat rather than as a political issue requiring a solution. From this perspective, the death penalty law signals a diminishing willingness to recognize Palestinians as a party to a process of political compromise.
Such an approach erodes, at both the psychological and political levels, the minimum degree of trust required for any form of dialogue. It also conveys to Palestinians the message that Israel’s formal institutions are moving not toward recognition of their rights, but toward intensified control and punishment.
The law becomes even more concerning when considered alongside a broader range of coercive measures, including the expansion of Israeli settlements, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages, home demolitions, security controls, and restrictions on freedom of movement. These measures can operate in ways that reinforce one another. In this context, the United Nations has argued that settler violence in the West Bank functions as a means of implementing Israeli State policy, with state authorities and violent settler groups and individuals pursuing overlapping strategic objectives, including maintaining the unlawful occupation, consolidating illegal Israeli settlements, facilitating the annexation of Palestinian territory, and displacing Palestinians from their land.
Although these measures are not equivalent to execution in terms of their severity, taken together they convey a common message: that creating the conditions necessary for a viable Palestinian political entity is not a policy objective of the Israeli authorities.
The two-state solution, even if it is not recognized by certain states, continues to be presented by a significant part of the international community as the principal framework for resolving the conflict. Its realization, however, requires territorial contiguity, a minimum degree of sovereignty, a reduction in violence, and acceptance of the principle of Palestinian statehood.
By contrast, Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state and have even emphasized that such a state will not come into existence. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu, during a visit to the Ofra settlement, stated: “I said 25 years ago that we would do everything to preserve our control over the Land of Israel, prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and thwart attempts to uproot us from here. Thank God, we have fulfilled what I promised.” Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right minister in Netanyahu’s government, likewise stated in connection with the advancement of the E1 settlement project that “the Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions.”
Under these circumstances, the death penalty law, when combined with settlement expansion and violence on the ground, not only intensifies tensions but also progressively hollows out the practical and psychological foundations of political compromise. The central problem, therefore, lies in the cumulative effect of policies and measures that, in practice, render the two-state solution an increasingly ineffective framework with diminishing prospects for implementation.
Conclusion
Overall, the death penalty law for Palestinians should be understood as more than a matter of criminal punishment or the mere enactment of legislation by the Israeli parliament. The law stands at the intersection of securitization, the display of power, the crisis of deterrence, and the closing of the horizon for political compromise. Its significance therefore extends beyond the text of the law itself. Within this framework, a Palestinian defendant is represented as a security threat whose execution by hanging can be justified through formal legislation. This indicates that law, rather than functioning solely as an instrument for the administration of justice, is becoming part of a broader mechanism of coercive governance.
The central message of this development is that the state is attempting to manage a historical and political conflict through coercive mechanisms, including punishment, intimidation, and the elimination of individuals. Yet this very approach not only fails to bring the Palestinian question closer to resolution, but also reinforces distrust, collective anger, and the reproduction of a collective memory of injustice among Palestinians, as well as among Arabs living in Israel.
At the same time, the law also illustrates the profound gap between the official language of security and the political reality of the conflict. The historical experience of Palestinians, as well as that of many anti-colonial struggles, demonstrates that elimination, execution, and severe punishment do not necessarily generate sustainable deterrence. On the contrary, they may at times transform the punished individual into a new symbol of suffering, resistance, and the demand for justice.
From this perspective, the death penalty law for Palestinians may contribute less to enhancing security for Israel than to deepening the cycle of violence and further obstructing channels for political dialogue. When such legislation is placed alongside settlement expansion, settler violence, security controls, and the practical rejection of a Palestinian state, the cumulative result is the gradual erosion of the prospects for political compromise and the narrowing of the space available for diplomatic solutions.
The central issue, therefore, is not simply that Israel has introduced a harsher punishment into its criminal justice system. Rather, the deeper concern is that the death penalty law formally entrenches a logic of elimination and, in doing so, casts an even darker shadow over the future of justice.
