High Court begins reviewing death penalty law as Adalah files petition after ACRI challenge

Justice Yechiel Kasher ordered the respondents to file a preliminary response and answer the request for interim relief by May 24, 2026, but declined at this stage to issue a temporary order freezing the law.

In its petition, Adalah asks the court to strike down the law as unconstitutional and to declare it void in the West Bank, especially the provision directing the military commander to apply the death penalty there to Palestinian residents.

The petition argues that the law creates a discriminatory dual-track system: one in civilian Israeli law and another in military law, with the West Bank provisions aimed at Palestinians alone.

Adalah’s filing, submitted on behalf of the organization, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, HaMoked, Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and MKs Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash), Ahmad Tibi (Ta’al), and Ayman Odeh (Hadash), frames the statute as both unconstitutional and unlawful under international law.

It argues that the law entrenches “cruel and inhuman punishment,” violates the rights to life, dignity, equality, and due process, and cannot lawfully be imposed on Palestinians in the West Bank because the Knesset is not the sovereign legislator there as related to a protected population under the law of occupation.

A central part of that argument is the claim that the law is discriminatory by design. The petition says the West Bank amendments apply only to Palestinians, while the civilian amendment to Israeli penal law ties death eligibility to wording about acting with intent to undermine the existence of the state.

Adalah argues that the civilian amendment is a political formulation meant in practice to exclude Jews who commit similar acts and to channel the law’s use primarily against Palestinians.

In the petition’s formulation, this amounts to a racially differentiated regime around the right to life. The filing also attacks the mechanics of the law.

Adalah argues that for West Bank residents it effectively creates a mandatory death sentence, except in highly exceptional cases, without meaningful room to weigh the circumstances of the offense or the defendant’s personal circumstances.

It says the law permits military courts to impose death by regular majority, allows the sentence even where the prosecution did not seek it, removes the military commander’s authority to mitigate or commute the punishment, forecloses clemency, sets a 90-day timetable for carrying out the execution, and restricts access to lawyers and family.

Adalah also asked the court for an interim order barring implementation of the law pending a final ruling, arguing that the harm is irreversible because the law took effect immediately upon passage and because the pressure of possible execution could distort plea decisions and undermine fair process even before any sentence is carried out.

Kasher, however, declined for now to issue a temporary order, instead setting a timetable for responses. Like the earlier ACRI petition, Adalah’s filing also challenges the law’s stated purpose of deterrence.

The petition says the Knesset was not presented with a factual basis showing that executions deter terrorism and notes that many of the legal and security officials who appeared during the legislative process rejected or cast doubt on that premise.

It further points to a March 26 response from the attorney-general’s office stating that although it could not block a private member’s bill, its position remained that the proposal in its current form did not meet constitutional standards.

The Public Defender’s Office also opposed the law during the legislative process and, in a statement issued after its passage, warned of the risk of legal error, wrongful convictions, and the irreversible execution of innocent people.

It said those concerns were not theoretical, pointing to data from the United States showing that since 1973 about 200 death-row inmates were later released after their convictions were found to be wrongful, alongside documented cases of executions that were later understood to have been mistaken.

The office also challenged the law’s deterrence rationale, saying that many studies over decades have failed to show that the death penalty has a clear deterrent effect, particularly in ideologically or terror-related crimes.

It further argued that capital punishment raises a profound moral and legal difficulty because it places the taking of life within the range of punishments a state may impose through judicial process, and it warned that such cases would place an extraordinary burden on defense counsel and risk undermining the fairness of proceedings.

Attached to the ACRI petition is an expert opinion by Oxford criminologist Carolyn Hoyle and Ben-Gurion University sociologist Ron Dudai, who conclude that no clear empirical proof has emerged showing that the death penalty deters homicide and that in terrorism-related or ideologically motivated offenses, the argument for deterrence is weaker still.

The petition cites their conclusion that executions in such settings may not deter at all and could instead fuel further mobilization and violence.

ACRI’s petition also places the law against a wider international backdrop, arguing that it runs directly against the global trend toward abolition and citing criticism from international bodies and legal organizations.

Adalah presents Israel’s move as a break from the long-standing de facto moratorium on executions that has existed for decades.

For now, the legal timeline is moving quickly. ACRI filed first, and Adalah followed the next day with a broader petition focused on both constitutional and international-law grounds.

The High Court has now opened the case, required a state response by May 24, and has left the law in force for the time being.