According to Israel’s new death penalty law, Palestinian children, like adults, could, in practice, find themselves facing the gallows. This might take some by surprise, or even be dismissed as an exaggeration. Sadly, it is neither.
The death penalty law, passed by Israel’s Knesset on March 30, mandates capital punishment for Palestinians convicted of carrying out deadly attacks. The legislation, often referred to as the ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ law, requires that executions be carried out swiftly, within 90 days, while sharply limiting avenues for appeal or commutation, according to human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
It resolves a long-standing political demand by Israel’s far-right leadership to formalize execution as a tool of control over Palestinians. As extremist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has repeatedly argued, those accused of such acts “deserve death,” framing the law not as an exception, but as a necessary policy.
Though the law itself does not explicitly mention children, it does not exclude them either. Knowing Israel’s treatment and legal classification of Palestinian children, this distinction is not minor – it is decisive.
Under Israel’s military court system, Palestinian children as young as 12 are prosecuted. In practice, they are often treated as adults within a system that offers few safeguards and operates with an extremely high conviction rate.
Defense for Children International – Palestine reported in its 2023 briefing Arbitrary by Default that the Israeli military detention system subjects Palestinian minors to “systematic”, institutionalized and “widespread ill-treatment.”
Reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other rights organizations describe consistent patterns of abuse, including night arrests, physical violence, threats, and psychological pressure.
Many children, these groups note, are interrogated without adequate legal safeguards, in conditions that facilitate coercion and the extraction of confessions.
Under international law, children are protected persons, entitled to special safeguards under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child – both of which prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
Not in Israel, however – a state that has consistently treated international law not as binding, but as an obstacle to its political and military objectives.
For Israel, Palestinian children are often framed not as civilians, but as potential threats. This framing represents a profound assault on basic humanity and fundamental rights – one that goes even further than the cynical language of ‘collateral damage’, by preemptively stripping children of their civilian status.
Israeli officials have made such views unmistakably clear.
In 2015, former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked shared and endorsed a text declaring that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy,” including its children, and that Palestinian mothers should not give birth to “little snakes.” Her statement was not an aberration, but a reflection of a political discourse in which dehumanization is normalized.
This, too, has often been dismissed as routine racism in Israeli politics. It is not.
Since October 7, 2023, Gaza’s children have been killed in staggering numbers: at least 21,289 children among more than 71,800 Palestinians killed, and over 44,500 wounded, according to UNICEF’s February 2026 update.
In the occupied West Bank, the pattern persists, with Palestinian children increasingly killed during Israeli military raids and settler violence.
All of this in mind, it should not be surprising that the death penalty law does not exempt children from the horrific fate it envisions for Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation.
To be clear, the death penalty law is neither about punishment nor deterrence. Israel does not require a law to kill Palestinians – whether those engaged in armed resistance, or, as has often been the case, civilians with no involvement in hostilities.
For decades, Israel has carried out assassinations, extrajudicial killings, and large-scale military operations that have resulted in thousands of Palestinian deaths.
The killing of Palestinians in Israeli prisons is no longer incidental, but documented. Since October 2023, at least 98 detainees have died in custody – many under conditions linked to torture, abuse, and medical neglect, according to Physicians for Human Rights–Israel.
The law, therefore, is about something else: the projection of power.
It is not fundamentally different from the performative brutality associated with figures like Ben-Gvir, whose rhetoric and conduct toward Palestinian prisoners have emphasized domination, humiliation, and control.
But within this projection of power lies a deadly consequence: Many people stand to be killed – including children.
Though some voices in the international community have spoken out against the law, these reactions have been limited and short-lived, quickly overshadowed by other developments.
Without sustained pressure, Israel has no reason to refrain from carrying out executions – decisions that will be made by military courts that lack even the most basic standards of fairness or adherence to international law.
Once this, too, is normalized, the threshold will shift again. And children will inevitably be drawn into it.
Israel has already normalized practices once deemed unthinkable. If it now normalizes the execution of children, it will cross a threshold even many colonial regimes did not openly breach.
There must be a limit – because its continuation will not only devastate Palestinians, but reverberate far beyond, eroding the most basic protections of human life itself.
