When Israel passed a death penalty law that solely targets Palestinians, it was to be expected that the country’s far right would celebrate. Even as much of the international community roundly condemns Israel for the law – with the United Nations human rights chief calling it a possible “war crime” – there has been little pushback inside Israel.According to Israeli rights groups and analysts, the introduction of a death penalty targeting people by their ethnicity is just the latest iteration in a long line of legal measures described as having normalised an “apartheid” legal system under which Palestinians are subject to codified discrimination to the benefit of their Israeli neighbours and occupiers.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe new law means that military courts in the occupied West Bank, which solely try Palestinians, will, by default, impose the death sentence on anyone found guilty by Israel’s legal system of carrying out an unlawful killing of Israelis when the act is defined by the court as “terrorism”.Conversely, any Israeli citizen charged with an unlawful killing in the occupied West Bank – such as the seven Palestinians killed during a spike in settler violence that has followed the start of the Israel-United States war on Iran – are tried in Israel’s civilian courts.Conviction rates for Palestinians tried in military courts run to 99.74 percent. In contrast, the conviction rate from 2005 to 2024 for Israelis tried for crimes committed in the West Bank is about 3 percent.Hardwired discrimination“I wasn’t surprised,” Arab lawmaker Aida Touma-Suleiman of the left-wing Hadash party said. She responded to the voting resu …
