Israel’s Death Penalty Law Perpetuates Racial Discrimination, Says UN Watchdog

Israel’s new death penalty law permitting the execution of Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks perpetuates racial discrimination against them, a United Nations committee said Friday, urging its immediate repeal. The law amounts to a grave erosion of human rights, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in a statement. Under the new law, passed by the Israeli parliament in March, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks classified as “terrorism” will face the death penalty as a default sentence. “The new law is a severe blow to human rights, rolling back Israel’s long-standing de facto moratorium on executions since 1962 and expanding the use of the death penalty,” the committee said. The law is “de facto applicable to Palestinians only” and sets a 90-day deadline for executions once a final judgement is rendered, the committee said. Furthermore, it said Israel should ensure that all Palestinian detainees “are guaranteed their rights to equal treatment before the law, security of person, protection against violence or bodily harm, and access to justice”. The committee also called on Israel to “end all policies and practices that amount to racial discrimination against and segregation of Palestinians”. It said other countries should “ensure that their resources are not used to enforce or support discriminatory policies and practices against Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. The committee of 18 independent experts monitors adherence to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its 182 states parties. Under the convention, which came into force in 1969, countries must eliminate racial discrimination, eradicate practices of segregation and guarantee equality before the law without distinction as to race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin. Israel ratified the convention in 1979. In March, UN rights chief Volker Turk branded Israel’s new law “cruel and discriminatory”, warning that applying it in occupied Palestinian territory “would constitute a war crime”. Israel has only applied the death penalty twice: in 1948, shortly after the state’s founding, against a military captain accused of high treason, and then in 1962, when the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence in the territory has soared since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.