A new petition against Israel’s newly enacted death penalty law reached the High Court on Monday, adding a third front to the fast-forming legal challenge over one of the coalition’s most controversial measures.
The petition was filed by Democrats MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the Zulat Institute, and Rabbis for Human Rights, through attorney Dafna Holz-Lechner. It asks the court to void the law outright, and separately to declare that it has no legal force in the West Bank, where the statute directs the defense minister to order the military commander to amend the security order within 30 days so that death becomes the mandatory sentence, subject only to a narrow exception, for certain Palestinian defendants tried in military court.
Unlike the earlier petitions, it also seeks a narrower urgent interim order aimed specifically at blocking that West Bank amendment from taking effect before the court rules.
In the petition, the three argue that the law inflicts a grave violation of the rights to life, dignity, equality, and due process, and does not satisfy constitutional standards. They also argue that the Knesset lacks authority to impose such a framework in the West Bank, where, they say, the governing legal regime is not ordinary Israeli law but the law of international belligerent occupation.
The filing goes further than a broad moral objection: It attacks the law’s structure, saying it creates a discriminatory system in which the harshest track is designed for Palestinians, especially through the military-court provisions.
The timing is central to the new petition. Last week, Justice Yechiel Kasher ordered the state to respond to the earlier Adalah and ACRI petitions by May 24, but declined at that stage to issue a temporary order freezing the law.
Kariv’s petition argues that this creates a more immediate, narrower risk: before the court even decides whether to freeze the law more broadly, the military commander could already amend the West Bank order and put the law’s harshest provisions into effect. That is why the petition asks for urgent temporary relief focused specifically on preventing the amendment to the military order.
The broader battle has been building since the Knesset passed the law last week by a 62-48 vote. The statute creates two tracks: one in Israeli criminal law and one in military law. In Israeli courts, judges would be able to impose either death or life imprisonment in certain terrorism murder cases.
Death becomes default punishment in West Bank military courts
In West Bank military courts, by contrast, death becomes the default punishment, with execution by hanging to follow within up to 90 days of a final sentence. Critics say that distinction is exactly what makes the law vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.
That legal vulnerability has been part of the story from the start. The law moved from a revived political campaign into an immediate courtroom fight, with ACRI petitioning first, Adalah following, and additional petitions expected. Those earlier filings argued that the law was discriminatory, unconstitutional, and unlawful under international law, and the Kariv-Zulat-Rabbis for Human Rights petition now builds on that same terrain while adding its own sharper request for immediate relief over the West Bank provisions.
The new filing also folds in the legislative history behind the law. According to the petition, the measure originated as private bills in 2023, was pushed by Otzma Yehudit’s Limor Son Har-Melech, and later merged with a parallel proposal, then returned to the National Security Committee in late 2025 before clearing its final readings.
The petition recounts repeated objections during that process from legal and security officials, including warnings that the law lacked a demonstrated deterrent basis and could inflame rather than calm the security situation.
Those concerns have not remained internal. After the law’s passage, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said the legislation violates international law, pointing in particular to discrimination concerns, due-process problems, the short timetable for executions, and the lack of meaningful clemency.
International criticism does not determine the High Court’s ruling, but it adds to the pressure around a law that many Israeli critics already argue could further complicate Israel’s international legal position.
Kariv, who led much of the opposition fight against the bill in the Knesset committee stage, cast the petition in stark political and moral terms. In a statement issued alongside the filing, he called the statute “racist and extreme,” and said it was “not a law but a populist and nationalist election campaign.” He also said he hoped both the Knesset’s legal adviser and the attorney-general’s office would support canceling the law, or at least significant parts of it.
The law itself reopened a much older Israeli argument. Although capital punishment has remained on the books for a narrow cluster of exceptional offenses, Israel has carried out only one civilian execution since statehood: that of Adolf Eichmann in 1962. Legal scholars have described the new statute not simply as another anti-terror step, but as a break from Israel’s long-standing practical nonuse of the death penalty.
What comes next is now clearer procedurally than substantively. Two earlier petitions are already pending; the state has until May 24 to respond in those cases, and the new petition asks to be joined with them while also requesting faster and narrower interim relief.
The immediate question before the court may therefore be less whether the law will ultimately survive, and more whether the justices are willing to let any part of it begin operating before they decide that larger constitutional fight.