A petition was filed with the High Court of Justice on Monday against the newly passed death penalty law for terrorists, opening what is expected to be the first of several legal challenges to one of the most controversial measures advanced by the coalition this term.
The law cleared its final readings in the Knesset on Monday evening, after months of debate and amid warnings from legal experts, human rights groups, and some security veterans that it was discriminatory, constitutionally vulnerable, and potentially harmful to Israel’s interests.
The petition, filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), asks the court to strike down the law and issue an interim order freezing its implementation pending a ruling.
In the filing, ACRI argues that capital punishment is unconstitutional in principle because of the irreversible harm it causes to the right to life, and says the specific framework enacted by the Knesset goes further by building separate legal tracks that, in practice, are aimed at Palestinians.
Under the final version that passed, Israeli courts would be able to impose either death or life imprisonment in certain terrorism murder cases, while West Bank military courts would treat death as the default sentence, subject only to narrow exceptions.
The law also provides for executions by hanging within up to 90 days of a final sentence. By the final vote, the revised version of the law softened some earlier provisions, but still preserved the harshest framework for Palestinians tried in military courts.
Content of ACRI High Court petition
In its petition, ACRI says that the structure is not incidental. It argues that the law creates “two parallel legal tracks,” one in military law and one in Israeli criminal law, while narrowing procedural protections around the gravest punishment available.
According to the petition, the military-court track lowers safeguards by allowing a death sentence without unanimity and by stripping the military commander of clemency powers, while the Israeli-law track adds a new offense drafted in a way that, the group argues, is intended to apply to Palestinians and not to Jewish offenders who commit comparable acts.
The petition also attacks the law’s execution timetable, arguing that carrying out a hanging within 90 days of a final judgment leaves too little time for meaningful review, clemency efforts, or attempts to prove wrongful conviction. It warns that because no justice system is immune from error, an accelerated and irreversible punishment sharply increases the danger of executing an innocent person.
Another central plank of the challenge concerns the West Bank. ACRI argues that the Knesset lacks the authority to legislate directly for the territory, where the military commander is the governing authority under the existing legal framework.
In one of the petition’s sharper formulations, it says the law effectively traps the military commander between Israeli legislation and international legal obligations.
The filing leans heavily on the legislative record, citing repeated warnings aired during committee deliberations that supporters of the bill had failed to establish a factual basis for deterrence.
ACRI says the claim that executions would deter attackers was not backed by meaningful research and notes that even during the law’s debates, security and legal officials reportedly raised doubts about the deterrent value of capital punishment and warned that the measure could produce the opposite effect.
That argument also surfaced publicly during the Knesset debate. Opponents in the plenum had said that no professional opinion had been presented to substantiate the assumptions behind the legislation, while supporters framed it as a matter of justice and deterrence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived to vote in favor, underscoring the coalition’s decision to push the bill through despite international criticism and domestic opposition.
For now, ACRI’s filing appears to be the first petition formally lodged after the law’s passage, though more are likely. Adalah, a Palestinian human rights legal center based in Haifa, said after the vote that it viewed the law as one of the most violent and discriminatory to enter Israel’s statute books and announced that it would petition the High Court “as a matter of utmost urgency.”
The group said the law effectively creates separate tracks based on national identity and is designed to expose Palestinians to a state execution regime while exempting Israeli Jewish offenders who commit similar offenses.
Another petition is already in the works. Democrats MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, who led the opposition’s parliamentary fight against the death penalty bill in the Knesset National Security Committee, said he intends to petition the High Court in the coming days, together with the Zulat Institute and Rabbis for Human Rights, through attorney Dafna Holz-Lechner.
Kariv described the law as “a disgrace,” both in its substance and in the political way it was approved in the Knesset, calling it “a rotten deal of cash for yeshivot in exchange for a noose for Otzma Yehudit.”
He said the legislation was immoral, ran contrary to the foundational values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and violated international legal obligations Israel had undertaken. He added that many of its provisions were unconstitutional and noted that the Knesset’s legal advisory bodies had warned of the difficulties embedded in the bill.
The Zulat Institute, meanwhile, called the law “a death penalty law for Arabs,” saying it was racist throughout and amounted to one of the worst laws ever passed by the Knesset. The group said it would fight to protect Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.
Rabbis for Human Rights said a policy of capital punishment runs against the spirit of Jewish law and the principle of the sanctity of life that underpins it. The organization said the law ignored warnings from senior security officials that it would not deter attacks but could instead escalate them, and said it expected the High Court to protect the state’s core values by striking it down.
Standing Together called it a “dangerous step” driven by vengeance rather than security. The comments do not form part of the current petition, but they add to the widening front of civil society opposition expected to feed into the coming litigation.
The law marks a sharp break with Israel’s long-standing practice in capital punishment. Although the death penalty remains on the books in a handful of exceptional categories, Israel has carried out only two executions in its history, most notably that of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962. If the new law were ever implemented, it would resume executions after more than six decades.
International criticism intensified even before the final vote. Reuters reported that the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom urged Israeli lawmakers to abandon the bill, while UN experts had earlier warned that a mandatory death penalty for terrorist acts would violate the right to life and discriminate against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The legal battle is now likely to move quickly. Because the law took effect immediately, ACRI asked the court for an urgent hearing and an interim injunction suspending its operation pending the justices' consideration of the merits. That means the first question before the High Court may not be only whether the law can survive constitutional review, but whether it should be frozen before the state has any chance to try to use it.