United Nations Calls on Israel to Abandon Bill for Executing Palestinian Prisoners

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on the Israeli authorities to abandon a new bill that imposes the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners.

In a statement issued on Friday, Türk urged the Israeli authorities to abandon their plans to propose new legislation imposing mandatory death sentences applied exclusively to Palestinians.

He warned that Israel "challenges international law on several levels."

Turk added that the drafting of these legislations, along with statements by Israeli politicians, indicates that the goal is for them to apply only to Palestinians, who are often convicted after unfair trials.

He emphasized that this raises serious concerns regarding discrimination against Palestinians and violations of their rights to fair trials, in addition to other violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

The High Commissioner said that these proposals also violate standards of international humanitarian law related to criminal procedures and imposing the death penalty on inhabitants of occupied territory.

He recalled that depriving any Palestinian from the West Bank and Gaza Strip of the fair trial guarantees stipulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention "constitutes a war crime."

He noted that the United Nations clearly opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, as it "is difficult to reconcile with human dignity, and it poses the risk of executing innocents, which is unacceptable."

Turk confirmed that the Israeli proposals to introduce mandatory death sentences leave no discretionary authority for the courts and violate the right to life.

The statement comes in response to a series of proposals presented before the Knesset, including amending the military law applied in the occupied West Bank, which obliges military courts to impose the death penalty mandatorily on all those convicted of intentional murder.

The proposals include amending the Israeli Penal Code to introduce the death penalty for those convicted of carrying out operations and intentionally killing Israelis, retroactively applying to those convicted in relation to the October 7, 2023 attacks.

In addition, there is a proposal to use the death penalty for acts of "terrorism or racism or hostility towards the public," which are terms defined in a vague and overly broad manner, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office.

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