Webinar Report
Mobilising Against Israel’s Death Penalty Law
13 May 2026
Executive Summary and Contextual Background
On 30 March 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed the ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ law by a legislative vote of 62 to 48. Spearheaded directly by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right leader of the Jewish Power Party and Minister of Internal Security, this development marks a severe escalation in the legal architecture of the occupation. To confront this reality, the Global Alliance for Palestine (GAFP) and the Association of Student Activism for Palestine (ASAP) convened an emergency webinar on 13 May 2026. The session brought together legal analysts, human rights defenders, political figures, and grassroots student organisers to both illuminate understanding of the law and provide a holistic overview of the strategies that can be used to challenge the law within the context of the global solidarity movement for Palestine.
The context of this legislation is deeply tied to the ongoing crisis in the occupied territories and Gaza. Currently, more than 9,500 Palestinians are held inside Israeli prisons – described by human rights organisations as a network of torture camps – with roughly half of these individuals detained without formal charge or trial. Panellists emphasised that this legal shift occurs alongside a historical record of extensive violence. Over 100 documented martyrs have passed away in these facilities due to severe physical beatings, systematic torture, and deliberate medical neglect since 7 October 2023.
Technical and Legal Anatomy of the Law
The panel systematically analysed the operational mechanics of the legislation, demonstrating how it is engineered to bypass standard international legal mechanisms and carry out irreversible state-sponsored killings.
Regarding mandatory capital punishment by hanging, the statute explicitly mandates death by hanging for Palestinians who are convicted of acts resulting in the death of an Israeli citizen. The text removes any possibility of standard legal intervention; once a conviction is secured, the sentence is mandatory, stripping away judicial avenues for pardons, sentence reductions, or commutation to life imprisonment. As Lujane Hamzeh observed during her opening remarks, ‘the state’s decision to kill is designed to be absolute and irreversible’.
A key component of the legislation is the 90-day execution window, which establishes a strict deadline for the execution from the date of the initial sentencing. Panellists exposed this timeline not as a standard measure of judicial efficiency, but as a technical tool designed to complete the state-sponsored execution before international legal bodies, human rights organisations, or foreign governments can mobilise diplomatic interventions or legal stays. Hamzeh highlighted that it is ‘a deliberate mechanism made to ensure that the state can complete its killing before the international community can mobilise to intervene’.
The law further alters the internal operations through reduced judicial thresholds in military courts, which already maintain an overall conviction rate of 96 per cent based heavily on confessions extracted under systematic torture and duress. It completely eliminates the previous legal requirement for a unanimous consensus among sitting judges, replacing it with a simple majority on a three-judge panel to authorise a state execution.
Furthermore, it creates a two-tiered apartheid framework. The legislation applies exclusively to Palestinians under military jurisdiction, while Jewish-Israeli settlers who commit identical acts resulting in death are tried in civilian courts under a completely separate, non-capital legal framework. Speakers noted that this represents a two-tiered system of justice where apartheid is codified directly into the statutory text.
The webinar also revealed the broadening scope of capital laws within the state. Following this primary bill, the Knesset advanced an even broader secondary law targeting any individual the state claims participated in the events of 7 October. While the first death penalty law passed with 62 votes, this second measure received 93 votes out of 120. Excluding Arab members of parliament, this represents over 90 per cent support among Jewish-Israeli Knesset members, demonstrating a cross-party consensus for state-sanctioned execution.
Summaries of Expert Testimonies
Dr Mustafa Barghouti
Physician, Founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, and GAFP Steering Committee Member
Dr Barghouti detailed the political climate within Israel that produced this legislation, describing the scenes inside the Knesset chamber – where proponents celebrated the passage of the law with champagne and wore noose-shaped lapel pins – as clear evidence of a fascist consensus. He noted that Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir further emphasised this focus when celebrating his birthday with a cake featuring an image of an execution rope.
Dr Barghouti argued that the primary purpose of this law is to provide retrospective legal cover for illegal acts already committed by Israeli occupation forces, stating:
‘The death penalty law is meant to provide cover to the facts that Israel has already conducted more than 1,000, in my opinion, and it could be 2,000 cases of field execution against Palestinian hostages who were taken hostages in Gaza, especially those in Sde Teiman prison.’
He noted that while the movement lacks full information, they possess clear testimonies of those who witnessed ‘the death penalty exercised even without a law, in field execution in Gaza’.
Furthermore, Dr Barghouti compared this legal system directly with historic colonial oppression, stating that the law ‘reflects how deep the system of apartheid is, but even takes it to a much higher level’. He observed:
‘Even in the worst times of South African apartheid system, the South African leaders at that time did not dare to reach that point of discrimination… passing a law which would have said that if a black man kills a white man, he would be executed, but the opposite will not happen. And that’s exactly what Israel has done.’
He concluded by warning that ‘this fascist government is so wrong when it thinks that the passage of such laws as death penalty laws will stop the Palestinian struggle’. Pointing to the executions of three Palestinian freedom fighters by the British colonial power in 1930, he reminded attendees that those deaths did not break the national will, but instead ‘led practically, or participated in leading, to the greatest revolution that Palestinian people conducted, which is 1936 revolution’.
Khaled Mahajne
Human Rights Lawyer, Prisoners and Detainee Affairs Commission
As the first legal professional to successfully gain entry into the isolated Sde Teiman detention facility, Mahajne delivered a direct account of the conditions facing detainees, stripping away the rhetoric of ‘judicial process’ to reveal a system defined by systematic brutality. He reported:
‘Since the 7th of October, and since the incarceration of so many Palestinians… from that day onwards, there have been so many violations, violations that are so difficult for me to even quantify.’
He detailed an environment where thousands of civilian detainees, including men, women, and children who have no connection to military operations, have been held continuously blindfolded and handcuffed for up to two years under conditions of severe starvation and medical neglect.
Mahajne shared the psychological weight of witnessing these spaces, stating:
‘The scenes of horror that I have personally seen at the Sde Teiman facility… are so bad that I cannot even describe in words or in detail how bad they were.’
He confirmed that at least 100 documented martyrs have already passed away under horrific torture within these prisons. He explained that the law’s 90-day execution deadline functions to silence victims and complete their executions before the physical marks of torture can be documented by outside medical examiners or human rights monitors. He emphasised that the military court system relies on confessions extracted under extreme duress, making the subsequent executions an organised form of judicial murder. He concluded with an appeal to international attendees:
‘This war on the prisoners has to stop. There should be an international stance against these Israeli laws.’
Arab Barghouti
Lead Organiser for the Campaign to Release Marwan Barghouti
Arab Barghouti focused on the profound psychological warfare embedded within the state’s legislative shifts, arguing that the true function of the death penalty statute is not the objective administration of justice, but rather a calculated strategy of collective punishment designed to fracture the Palestinian social fabric. By codifying mandatory executions within an irreversible 90-day window, the law functions as an instrument of state terror that haunts the living as much as it sentences the accused, signalling to the entire population that no degree of international prestige, legal standing, or political recognition can shield them from lethal state sanctions.
Barghouti contextualised this systematic terror through a moving personal account of his father, Marwan Barghouti, who has been incarcerated for decades; he detailed a multi-generational cycle of state-enforced alienation where visits are restricted to 45-minute sessions behind glass barriers, entirely preventing physical contact. This deliberate targeting of the family structure aims to traumatise and subjugate younger generations, a reality shared by over 9,000 political prisoners facing worsening, inhumane conditions.
Despite this framework of isolation, Barghouti highlighted how figures of leadership systematically transform spaces of confinement into sites of enduring intellectual and political resistance. He detailed his father’s legacy of defiance from within the prison cells, which includes passing academic papers to his lawyer to establish an educational pipeline that has graduated over 450 prisoners with bachelor’s degrees and 200 with master’s degrees, alongside spearheading the landmark ‘Prisoners’ Document’ to unify major political factions. Invoking his father’s resolute words – ‘our chains will be broken before we are’ – Barghouti maintained that hopelessness is a privilege that the liberation movement cannot afford, asserting that historical precedents demonstrate the ultimate failure of colonial state terror to crush a population’s collective will for self-determination. He concluded by urging the international community to actively support the Free Marwan Campaign (freemarwan.org) to disrupt the normalised machinery of state executions and secure the release of all political detainees.
Zahra Farooque
Liberated UK Political Prisoner and Student Organiser with ASAP
Zahra Farooque bridged the localised horrors of the military court system with the global network of Western complicity, drawing directly from her 15-month detention without charge in the United Kingdom following direct action against Elbit Systems. She analysed how Western states actively weaponise domestic legal and judicial architectures to criminalise solidarity movements, thereby shielding the commercial and material supply lines that sustain the occupation. Farooque offered a critical evaluation of contemporary Western activism, arguing that in an era defined by the physical construction of torture camps and lethal legislation, solidarity must urgently transition away from passive digital awareness and moral outrage on social media. She emphasised that treating incarceration as a series of isolated, tragic human interest stories plays into the hands of the state; instead, international movements must explicitly adopt the radical political causes of the prisoners, transforming local resistance into an active, unified global struggle.
To shift from symbolic protest to material obstruction, Farooque outlined a direct strategy targeting the physical infrastructure of the occupation’s supply chains, specifically highlighting Elbit Systems, which provides roughly 85% of Israel’s domestic military equipment. She revealed the acute institutional anxiety surrounding this strategy by noting that during her own trial, defendants were strictly barred by the court from mentioning Elbit Systems or detailing its manufacturing operations – a form of judicial censorship that underscores exactly where the state feels most vulnerable. Farooque concluded with an uncompromising call to action for the student movement, insisting that university bodies must look beyond passive divestment campaigns and instead organise a relentless, direct disruption of the financial, academic, and military ties that local institutions maintain with the occupation. True solidarity, she maintained, requires Western activists to accept tangible personal and legal risks to actively dismantle the material networks that facilitate global state violence.
International Political Failure and Complicity
The webinar included a detailed evaluation of the failure of the international community to enforce legal accountability. Regarding the subversion of binding treaties, the United Nations has explicitly stated that the ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ law directly violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a binding international treaty that Israel itself ratified.
In discussing the blocked European sanctions, panellists noted that following the ratification of the law, the governments of Spain, Slovenia, and Ireland formally petitioned the European Union to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, citing a direct breach of the human rights provisions contained in Article 2.
However, imperial protection disrupted this process. This diplomatic demand for economic and political accountability was blocked and rejected within the European Union due to the direct intervention of Germany and Italy. Dr Barghouti categorised the failure of European governments to implement these sanctions as a serious crime, stating:
‘In my opinion, that’s a crime. It’s a serious crime that that demand from the side of Spain, Slovenia, and Ireland was not accepted, although the crime that Israel is committing is so obvious and so clear.’
Strategic Framework and Key Actionable Takeaways
The webinar concluded with a concrete, forward-looking roadmap designed to move the international solidarity movement from awareness into targeted, strategic action. Dr Barghouti stated that ‘the main first demand should be complete boycott of the Israeli Knesset that passed this law’. Activists are directed to launch targeted, localised campaigns within their respective national legislative bodies – with an immediate focus on the British Parliament and European assemblies – to gather signatures and force a total severance of all inter-parliamentary relations and diplomatic cooperation.
Furthermore, the passage of these capital laws means that normalisation under these legislative conditions is impossible. The global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) framework must be escalated internationally, targeting the state’s economic standing and treating its legislative bodies as rogue instruments of colonial violence.
Solidarity networks must also focus their efforts on directly confronting and obstructing the corporations that provide material, technological, and military assistance to the occupation. Campaigns must mirror direct-action tactics to disrupt the manufacturing and supply chains of arms suppliers like Elbit Systems, cutting off the material basis of state violence. Finally, the international student movement must serve as the organising engine of active resistance, translating intellectual and academic solidarity into direct material obstruction on campuses and in major cities worldwide. Student groups must form co-ordinated fronts to pressure academic and financial institutions to completely divest from the machinery of state execution.
Conclusion
In her closing remarks, Lujane Hamzeh emphasised that the work of the Global Alliance for Palestine has advanced from mapping the machinery of propaganda to directly confronting the physical machinery of state execution. With over 9,500 Palestinians currently held in detention camps and a mandatory 90-day execution clock established by law, the urgency of the situation cannot be overstated. Hamzeh concluded the evening by reminding the audience of the high stakes involved, stating:
‘Last month, we mapped the machinery of propaganda. Tonight, we’re confronting the machinery of state execution. There is so much more work to do… the urgency cannot be overstated. This is the moment where silence becomes a death sentence.’
