On March 30, 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a new death penalty law, described as “one of the world’s most extreme death penalty laws.” Designed to apply only to Palestinians, the law is situated within a broader history of discriminatory laws imposed under Israel’s system of apartheid. This visual explores Israel’s new death penalty law, highlighting how Israel applies separate legal systems in the same territory—civil law for Israelis and military law for Palestinians. This legal dualism simultaneously strips Palestinians of the fundamental right to a fair trial and ensures that Israeli settlers and soldiers operate with near total impunity.
Special thanks to Lamis Alsayed for her collaboration on this visual.
For years, Israeli forces already operated under rules that permitted the shooting and killing of unarmed persons, so long as they could nominally be deemed a threat. But Israel’s current war has expanded this category to the point that nearly everyone can now be made into a target. In this sense, Israel is not doing something new with this law. It is catching up with itself. The execution law is largely a shield designed to protect soldiers from even the limited threat of accountability, and to formalize what the field has already made routine.
— Abdaljawad Omar in Mondoweiss
This new death penalty law formalizes a pattern seen across colonial systems: turning state violence against colonized peoples into policy through the language of law.