Adalah Statement on International Human Rights Day 2025: Israel’s Death Penalty Bill Targeting Palestinians Must be Withdrawn
Today, on International Human Rights Day, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – urgently calls for the immediate withdrawal and categorical rejection of the “Death Penalty Bill” – formally titled the Penal Law (Amendment No. 159 – Death Penalty for Terrorists) – 2025 – which represents one of the most extreme and dangerous legislative measures ever advanced against Palestinians. This bill embodies the full force of Israel’s escalating brutality, dehumanization, and vengeance towards Palestinians.
Passed in its first Knesset reading in November 2025 and now being prepared by the Knesset committee for second and third (final) readings, the bill mandates the death penalty for anyone who “intentionally or indifferently causes the death of an Israeli citizen” when allegedly motivated by “racism or hostility toward a public” and with the purpose of harming the State of Israel or “the rebirth of the Jewish people in its land.” The bill is driven by a racist and vengeful purpose; it is designed to operate exclusively against Palestinians – both citizens of the state and residents of the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). It includes racially based distinctions that flagrantly violate the fundamental constitutional principle of equality and the most basic human right: the right to life.
As detailed in Adalah’s 18 November 2025 letter to relevant Israeli authorities, the bill is unconstitutional and violates the most fundamental and supreme right: the right to life. Adalah stressed that the bill violates both international and Israeli constitutional law, which explicitly recognizes the ‘sanctity of life’ as a protected constitutional value. Moreover, its sponsors have made their racist and vengeful intentions explicit. During the Knesset committee deliberations, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and members of his Otzma Yehudit party entered the room wearing gallows pins, boasting that “of course there is the option of the gallows and the electric chair – and also lethal injection”. The committee chair, MK Zvika Fogel, further concluded by asserting that Israel is facing “new Nazis” and that the answer is the death penalty for those who “came to kill Jews just because they are Jews.” These statements and displays make unmistakably clear that the bill seeks to normalize state killing of Palestinians and is driven by openly racist and punitive motivations.
This legislation is the most cruel in a series of new laws targeting Palestinians in Israeli custody; enabling mass torture and collective punishment. The mere introduction of this bill reflects the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians, which is also fueling the ongoing genocide in Gaza and widespread extrajudicial executions, all carried out with complete impunity.
International human rights bodies have already expressed grave alarm. In its concluding observations on Israel, issued on 25 November 2025, the UN Committee Against Torture expressed concern regarding the bill, and suggested that the State should consider declaring a moratorium on the death penalty and consider abolishing it. The Committee also noted that “mandatory imposition of the death penalty, without consideration of the defendant’s personal circumstances or the particular circumstances of the offense, constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life.”
On 3 December 2025, eight UN special rapporteurs and independent experts sent a communication to Israel noting their concern regarding the Death Penalty Bill, stating that the bill “protects only Israeli citizens and Jewish interests, thus adversely treating non-Israeli and non-Jewish members of the public. Further, in practice, it is likely to indirectly discriminate against Palestinians under Israeli occupation” and that “because Israeli military trials of civilians typically do not meet international fair trial standards under human rights law and humanitarian law, any resulting imposition of the death penalty would be arbitrary in violation of article 6 of the ICCPR”.
On this International Human Rights Day – as the world marks the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its promise of equality, dignity, and protection for all – Palestinians continue to face genocide, mass displacement, systematic torture, and a legal regime designed to strip them of fundamental rights.
Adalah calls on the international community to take urgent, concrete action to demand the immediate withdrawal of the Death Penalty Bill and to halt Israel’s systemic assault on Palestinians’ rights, lives, and freedoms.
Read also: “Death Penalty Bill in Israel: An imminent threat to the human rights of Palestinians”, April 2023 (still relevant as the bill is the same):
