Editorial Le Monde: The law, passed Monday by the Israeli parliament, tramples on the ideal
Apr 02, 2026
Death penalty for Palestinians accused of ‘terrorist’ murder continues Israeli government’s downward spiral
Le Monde
The law, passed Monday by the Israeli parliament, tramples on the ideal that Israel long claimed to embody, of a nation committed to values forged by a history of persecution and mass crimes.
Published today at 1:06 pm (Paris) 2 min read Lire en français
A single detail can sum up a shift. That was the case with the noose worn proudly, as an emblem, by some Israeli lawmakers on their clothing during the Knesset debate on the bill establishing the automatic application of the death penalty to Palestinians accused of murder committed in the context of “terrorist” actions. This bill was championed by the supremacist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who represents a political faction long banned in Israel due to its extremism. It was adopted on Monday, March 30, by a clear majority of 62 votes to 48. It received the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. An appeal has been filed before the Supreme Court.
The law states that any person causing the death of another “with the aim of harming an Israeli citizen or resident out of an intention to put an end to the existence of the State of Israel shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.” The death penalty will be the default penalty for Palestinians in the West Bank for acts deemed as terrorism by the military courts. The death penalty has existed in Israeli law since its founding, but has only been pronounced and carried out once, in 1962, against a Nazi war criminal for his central role in the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.
At a time when Israeli terrorism has spread in the occupied Palestinian territories – alarming even the army, which has regularly been complicit in increasingly uninhibited abuses and violence – the passage of this legislation represents a grave error and a betrayal. The discrimination it institutes isolates Israel from the countries with which it once identified. This law tramples the ideal Israel long claimed to represent: that of a nation mindful of values forged through a history of persecution and mass crimes.
A quarter-century ago, the rise of extrajudicial assassinations targeting Palestinians accused of violence fueled heated debates within Israeli society, both over the principle and the number of acceptable collateral victims resulting from these eliminations. The cycle of war triggered by the October 7, 2023, massacres carried out by Hamas, and the terrifying number of Palestinian civilians killed by strikes officially targeting armed militants, have shown that these debates are no longer taking place.
Israel is moving away from the state that long boasted of being the only democracy in the Middle East, forgetting that it has already subjected millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the arbitrariness of occupation. The administrative detention of Palestinian men and women by the military authorities, without charge or trial, for an unknown and indefinitely renewable period, remains a prime example of this practice.
On the eve of the vote, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom warned Israeli lawmakers against the “adoption of this bill,” which “would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.” Their warning went unheeded and now leaves these countries facing a choice: to remain faithful to these principles, which obliges them to take action in response to this vote, or to accept their own powerlessness.
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Le Monde
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