This law was passed by the Israeli Knesset on March 30, 2026.

Its passing marks a dangerous and unprecedented escalation in Israel’s pursuit of Palestinian erasure.

This law mandates the death penalty for Palestinians accused of causing the death of an Israeli citizen ‘deliberately or through indifference,’ from a motive of racism or hostility against an Israeli citizen and with the aim of harming the State of Israel and ‘the national revival of the Jewish people in its land’.

It includes two distinct tracks: in the occupied West Bank, military courts would impose the death penalty under military law, by a simple majority of judges rather than a unanimous decision. In ‘Israel’ and occupied East Jerusalem, the death penalty would apply under Israeli criminal law.

The wording of the legislation makes clear that it will function as yet another apartheid policy and genocidal tool, in that it will apply exclusively to Palestinians, entrenching Israel’s racial domination, subjugation, and destruction of the Palestinian people. In all cases, sentences would be mandatory, carried out by hanging within 90 days, and expressly exempt from commutation. This puts thousands of Palestinian detainees – including children – at imminent risk of execution.

This law violates binding norms of international human rights and humanitarian law. Framed as a counter-terrorism measure amid mass arrests and enforced disappearances across the occupied Palestinian territory, the Law risks enabling collective death sentences against the legally protected Palestinian population living under a protracted, unlawful occupation.

This Law must also be considered in the broader context of Israel’s ongoing policies and practices toward the Palestinian people that amount to acts of genocide, apartheid, and persecution. By normalising state-sanctioned executions within a system of racial discrimination and prolonged occupation, the Execution Law escalates an already grave situation and further advances Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people.

In this regard we call on the Canadian government to:

1. Label the Law as an unlawful attack on the Palestinian people, including children, that constitutes acts of genocide, apartheid, collective punishment, torture and some of the most serious human rights violations;
2. Demand Israel immediately cease its unlawful military activity and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory.
3. To live up to its binding obligations to prevent and punish the crime of genocide and to respect and ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which includes: imposing a full arms embargo; cutting diplomatic and trade relations; imposing comprehensive sanctions; and pursuing accountability;
4. To act in accordance with their legal obligations as outlined in the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem;
5. To call on the UN Security Council to implement economic sanctions and other countermeasures capable of forcing Israel to adhere to its binding obligations under international law and ending its mass atrocities against the Palestinian people;
6. Demand the reconstitution of the UN Centre and Special Committee against Apartheid;
7. Ask the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to expedite the investigation into the Situation in Palestine with full resources and onsite visits as promised in December 2022.

Information and the call for action are based on statements by Al-Haq and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association and other Palestinian human rights organizations.

Read the joint submission to the UN OHCHR, with a focus on the impact on children for the purpose of informing the Secretary General’s report, here.

Read the joint submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial or arbitrary executions, with a focus on how it violates the prohibition on torture, here.

Currently there are about 9500 prisoners, of which over one-third are administratively detained. For current info on prisoners see the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association website and for information on children detainee’s see Defense for Children International Palestine’s website.

#FreePalestineHostages

#FreeThemAll

Additional context on international human rights and humanitarian law

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the death penalty – where not yet abolished – may be imposed only for the “most serious crimes” and following strict compliance with fair trial guarantees. Trials before military courts that lack independence and all key tenets of due process, including access to legal counsel, render any resulting death sentence arbitrary and unlawful.

The Execution Law’s discriminatory application and mandatory imposition of the death penalty, based on a simple majority and without the possibility of commutation, compound these violations.

In addition to violating the fundamental right to a fair trial enshrined in Article 14 of the ICCPR and related principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination, the Execution Law represents a real and blatant risk to the right to life protected under Article 6 of the ICCPR and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Execution Law’s violation of the jus cogens prohibition of torture is compounded by widespread documentation of torture and ill-treatment in Israeli detention facilities. Israel’s systematic use of torture, especially to extract false confessions, means that any conviction and subsequent sentence would likely rest on unlawfully obtained evidence.

The Execution Law also contravenes international humanitarian law, specifically Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting collective punishment. Framed as a counter-terrorism measure amid mass arrests and enforced disappearances across the occupied Palestinian territory, the Law risks enabling collective death sentences against the legally protected Palestinian population living under a protracted, unlawful occupation.