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A United Nations committee said Friday that Israel’s new death penalty law, which permits the execution of Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks, perpetuates racial discrimination and should be repealed immediately.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said the law amounts to a grave erosion of human rights and expands the use of capital punishment in Israel.
The law was passed by the Israeli parliament in March.
Under the measure, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who are 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 committee said the law is “de facto applicable to Palestinians only” and sets a 90-day deadline for executions after a final judgment is issued.
The committee said Israel should ensure that all Palestinian detainees are guaranteed equal treatment before the law.
It also said detainees should be guaranteed security of person, protection against violence or bodily harm, and access to justice.
The committee called on Israel to “end all policies and practices that amount to racial discrimination against and segregation of Palestinians.”
It also urged other countries to ensure their resources are not used to enforce or support discriminatory policies and practices against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is made up of 18 independent experts.
It monitors compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which has 182 states parties.
The convention entered into force in 1969. Under the convention, countries must eliminate racial discrimination, eradicate segregation practices and guarantee equality before the law without distinction based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.
Israel ratified the convention in 1979.
In March, U.N. rights chief Volker Turk called Israel’s new law “cruel and discriminatory.”
He warned that applying the law in occupied Palestinian territory “would constitute a war crime.”
Israel has carried out the death penalty twice.
The first case was in 1948, shortly after the state’s founding, against a military captain accused of high treason. The second was in 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Violence in the territory has increased sharply since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.
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