The gallows of occupation: Law as execution in Israel’s apartheid state

The recent enactment of capital punishment legislation by the Knesset is not a mere domestic legal development. It is an act that demands examination under the most serious categories of international law. When a state creates a legal pathway to execute a specific, occupied population through a system structurally incapable of delivering justice, it does not simply violate rights—it enters the domain of prosecutable international crime. The law’s intent is thinly veiled, and its effect unmistakable. It establishes a regime in which Palestinians, tried in military courts under occupation, may be sentenced to death and executed within an accelerated timeframe that all but extinguishes the possibility of meaningful appeal or clemency. The same law, in form, extends to Israeli citizens, […]