Israel’s New Law Allows for Publicized Death Penalty Trials for Palestinians Charged with October 7^th Attacks

On May 11, 2026, law­mak­ers in Israel passed leg­is­la­tion by a vote of 93 – 0 cre­at­ing a spe­cial tri­bunal with­in the mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tem with the author­i­ty to impose the death penal­ty on Palestinians con­vict­ed of involve­ment in the October 7, 2023, attacks. The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides that pro­ceed­ings will be con­duct­ed in Jerusalem with a pub­licly avail­able livestream. The new tri­bunal will have the author­i­ty to charge approx­i­mate­ly 300 detained Palestinians accused of ter­ror­ism offens­es under Israel’s 1950 law on the pre­ven­tion of geno­cide, which con­tem­plates a death sen­tence as pun­ish­ment. Several human rights groups have raised con­cerns with the new law, not­ing that the lan­guage of the new leg­is­la­tion makes impos­ing a death sen­tence too easy and removes pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards meant to pro­tect the right to a fair tri­al. Appeals would be allowed under this leg­is­la­tion; how­ev­er, they must be heard by a spe­cial appel­late court. The bill also allows a pan­el of judges to impose death sen­tences by a major­i­ty, not a unanimous vote. 

This new leg­is­la­tion comes a lit­tle more than a month after the Knesset passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists law in March 2026, mak­ing Israel one of few democ­ra­cies to expand use of the death penal­ty in recent years. The March leg­is­la­tion man­dates death by hang­ing for offens­es clas­si­fied as ​“ter­ror­ism relat­ed” — and as writ­ten, applies exclu­sive­ly to Palestinians.This leg­is­la­tion did not apply retroac­tive­ly to crimes com­mit­ted before its pas­sage, prompt­ing pas­sage of the May 2026 legislation. 

Muna Haddad, a lawyer for Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – told Al Jazeera, “[t]he bill explic­it­ly per­mits mass tri­als that devi­ate from stan­dard rules of evi­dence, includ­ing broad judi­cial dis­cre­tion to admit evi­dence obtained under coer­cive con­di­tions that may amount to tor­ture or ill-treat­ment.” Ms. Haddad added that ​“this con­sti­tutes a severe vio­la­tion of fair tri­al guar­an­tees that falls well short of inter­na­tion­al law require­ments.” Sara Bashi, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, says that her group knows of wide­spread tor­ture of those being detained by Israeli author­i­ties in con­nec­tion with October 7 and is con­cerned ​“that they are going to be con­vict­ed and even exe­cut­ed based on con­fes­sions extract­ed under torture.” 

Departing from the stan­dard Israeli approach to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, which usu­al­ly pro­hibits cam­eras in court­rooms, the new leg­is­la­tion express­ly man­dates that the film­ing and pub­lic broad­cast of the key moments in these tri­als will be avail­able on a spe­cif­ic web­site for the pub­lic to view. Ms. Haddad raised sev­er­al con­cerns with this prac­tice, not­ing the pro­vi­sion ​“trans­forms pro­ceed­ings into show tri­als at the expense of the accused’s rights.” She explains, “[t]he pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing pub­lic hearings…violate the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, the right to a fair tri­al, and the right to dignity…The frame­work effec­tive­ly treats indict­ment as a find­ing of guilt, before any judi­cial exam­i­na­tion has begun.” 

Israeli rights groups, includ­ing Hamoked, Adalah, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, told media that ​“jus­tice for the vic­tims of October 7 is a legit­i­mate and urgent imper­a­tive,” but ​“account­abil­i­ty must be pur­sued through a process which includes rather than aban­dons the prin­ci­ples of justice.” 

Outside the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, pro­tes­tors also made clear their objec­tions to the new leg­is­la­tion. Hisham al-Wahad, the broth­er of miss­ing jour­nal­ist Haitham al-Wahad, told the BBC, “[w]e as fam­i­lies of pris­on­ers and fam­i­lies of the miss­ing are call­ing on states and pub­lic opin­ion — inter­na­tion­al, Arab and Islamic — to take action to stop such a law and such a matter.” 

International human rights groups have con­demned both pieces of death penal­ty leg­is­la­tion and experts from the United Nations have called on the European Union to sus­pend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which serves as the pri­ma­ry legal frame­work for gov­ern­ing rela­tions between EU mem­bers and Israel. Experts said, “[t]he EU can­not cred­i­bly claim to uphold human rights while sus­tain­ing pref­er­en­tial trade with a State whose con­duct has been found by mul­ti­ple inter­na­tion­al bod­ies as amount­ing to geno­cide, crimes against human­i­ty, and war crimes.” Addressing the March 2026 leg­is­la­tion, the UN experts cat­e­go­rized the law as a ​“dis­crim­i­na­to­ry regime” which ​“vio­lates inter­na­tion­al law and con­sti­tutes grave esca­la­tion in the oppres­sion of Palestinians.” They said, ​“In light of the grav­i­ty and scale of the human rights vio­la­tions doc­u­ment­ed, full sus­pen­sion is not a mat­ter of polit­i­cal dis­cre­tion but a legal imper­a­tive incum­bent on the European Union, and rep­re­sents the min­i­mum mea­sure required to align its actions with its oblig­a­tion under international law.” 

Data from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel indi­cates the coun­try cur­rent­ly has approx­i­mate­ly 1,300 Palestinians from Gaza in cus­tody who do not have any for­mal charges made against them. Since October 2023, at least 7,000 Palestinians from Gaza were tak­en into cus­tody, 5,000 of whom were even­tu­al­ly released. The 1,300 sta­tis­tic does not include Palestinians held on sus­pi­cion of their involve­ment in the October 7 attacks.