JAMIL F. KHAN | When unequal death becomes law, justice gives way to political violence

Israel’s newly enacted death penalty law, designed to apply almost exclusively to Palestinians, has triggered an international outcry that spans human rights organisations, legal scholars, and communities with lived experience of apartheid.

The legislation, passed on the 30th of March, introduces another element of a punitive regime that entrenches an already unequal system of (in)justice in the Palestinian territories under Israeli control.

In doing so, it invites direct comparison to apartheid-era South Africa, where legal structures were deliberately engineered to control, intimidate, and eliminate political opposition.

The law mandates the death penalty in Israel’s military courts for Palestinians convicted of killings defined as “terrorism,” removing judicial discretion except in vaguely defined “special reasons.”

Israeli citizens and residents, including Israeli settlers living in the same occupied territory, are explicitly exempt and instead tried in civilian courts, where the death penalty is not imposed.

Human Rights Watch has noted that the legislation “would primarily, if not exclusively, be applied to Palestinians,” describing it as part of a system that embeds “discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice”.

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Within these military courts, where Palestinians alone are prosecuted, conviction rates soar above 96% according to rights groups, relying heavily on confessions that are frequently alleged to have been extracted under coercion.

Civilian courts handling Israeli defendants show conviction rates around 3% for crimes committed in the same territory, underscoring the stark discrepancy in legal outcomes.

For Palestinians, this disparity is not new. The Israeli legal structure governing the occupied West Bank has long mirrored the dual-legalism characteristic of apartheid governance.

Under apartheid South Africa, the judiciary functioned as a tool to enforce racial hierarchy, with Black people tried in separate courts, under separate laws, and facing far harsher penalties.

South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) drew this parallel explicitly, noting that apartheid South Africa executed 134 political prisoners under laws that defined resistance to racial domination as terrorism, a label now similarly employed in the Israeli context.

The Israeli law deepens this structural division.

Not only does it impose mandatory death sentences on Palestinians in military courts, but it also accelerates the timeframe for executions to within 90 days and severely restricts access to legal counsel, family visits, or external oversight.

Amnesty International warns that such restrictions “strip away key fair‑trial and human rights safeguards” and may amount to violations of international law, including potential war crimes when imposed by military courts.

The discriminatory application of these new provisions reveals the system as apartheid, in both structure and effect.

Al Jazeera reports that many Israeli rights groups view the law as the latest in a long line of measures that have “normalised an apartheid legal system under which Palestinians are subject to codified discrimination”.

The UN human rights chief has gone further, suggesting the law could constitute a “war crime” given its discriminatory nature and the context of occupation.

Within Israel itself, criticism has been mixed.

Liberal Jewish groups abroad have described the law as a “moral stain,” expressing outrage that the country is institutionalizing a death penalty regime targeted at a specific ethnic group.

Within Israeli politics, however, the bill passed with relatively little resistance from mainstream parties, and its proponents on the far right, which seems to be Israel’s only effective political ideology, celebrated it as a triumph, with champagne, while wearing grotesque lapel pins in the form of nooses.

The comparison to apartheid South Africa is not merely rhetorical. Under apartheid, the death penalty became a mechanism to terrorise communities and eliminate political dissidents.

Pretoria’s courts interpreted “terrorism” and “subversion” broadly, applying capital punishment disproportionately to Black South Africans, including figures such as Solomon Mahlangu and Vuyisile Mini, who are remembered as freedom fighters.

The parallels are particularly striking when examining Israel’s context: a population living under military occupation, subject to laws imposed by a government they cannot vote for, prosecuted in courts they do not control, and now facing a death penalty designed uniquely for them.

Israel’s new law similarly transforms the military courts into an instrument of political suppression. The use of the term “terrorism” to describe acts of resistance, whether violent or nonviolent, is not new in the Israeli legal framework.

But the new law raises the stakes dramatically by making execution the default consequence. As SAJFP notes, when a state defines resistance to occupation as terrorism, “it does not fight crime. It executes politics”.

The timing of the law also contributes to a broader picture of escalating repression. Over 9,500 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel, including hundreds of children, many under administrative detention without charge or trial, a system human rights groups have long criticised as violating due process norms.

The new law opens the possibility that detainees prosecuted in the military courts could be subject to capital punishment under procedures designed to limit transparency and international scrutiny.

Supporters of the law claim it is a necessary security measure intended to deter attacks against Israelis. But numerous legal experts dispute this rationale, noting that capital punishment has not been shown to reduce violence and that its use in discriminatory frameworks often fuels greater instability.

Human Rights Watch emphasises that the bill “aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny,” framing it not as a security tool but as an extension of systemic discrimination.

The broader implications of the law cannot be separated from the geopolitical context. It emerges during a period of genocidal bombardment, rising settler violence, and deepening authoritarianism within Israel’s already diabolical political landscape.

The fact that Israeli settlers involved in lethal attacks on Palestinians will continue to be tried in civilian courts, where the death penalty is not applied and convictions remain rare, underscores the law’s asymmetric design.

Al Jazeera notes that seven Palestinians were killed during a spike in settler violence, yet Israelis involved in such killings are shielded from the very measures imposed on Palestinians accused of similar acts.

Ultimately, the new death penalty law represents a decisive step toward hardening Israel’s system of legal segregation. It does not merely resemble apartheid South Africa but advances a legal strategy that the apartheid government used for decades: deploying the court system to criminalise dissent, protect the dominant population, and eradicate political opposition.

While historical parallels are never perfect, the resonance between these two systems, separated by continents but aligned in structure and intent, offers a stark warning.

Where discriminatory law becomes codified, injustice becomes routine. And where death becomes a legal tool wielded unequally, the line between security policy and political violence begins to dissolve.

Dr Jamil F. Khan is an award-winning author, doctoral critical diversity scholar, and research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.