Israel’s prisoner execution bill: Security solution or moral misstep?

On November 10, 2025, the Israeli Knesset approved a highly controversial and alarming bill in its first reading, with 39 in favour and 16 against.

Following the parliamentary session, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was seen celebrating and distributing baklava to various Israelis. However, two additional readings are required before the bill becomes a legally binding document (law) prone to effective implementation.

Meanwhile, this bill compels a sincere thought-provoking question: would the execution of “terrorists” truly decrease violence and enhance security, or will it lead to a never-ending cycle of animosity, injustice and bloodshed?

What is the proposed bill?

In late September 2025, the Israeli parliament’s National Security Committee approved sending a bill, proposed by Ben Gvir’s party Otzma Yehudit (meaning “Jewish Power” in English), that would impose the death penalty on “terrorists” to the Knesset plenum for a first reading. Indeed, that same committee gave its approval for the bill on November 3, 2025.

The bill calls for the execution of prisoners who Tel Aviv believes to be “terrorists.” It proposes that “a terrorist convicted of murder motivated by racism or hatred towards the public, and under circumstances where the act was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel... will be sentenced to the death penalty – mandatory, without any option or discretionary authority for the court.” This means that anyone who intentionally or negligently causes the death of an Israeli citizen out of racial or hateful motives and harms Israel will be subject to the death penalty, while the ruling cannot be reduced or replaced once it has been issued definitively. Although the bill does not entail any specific group, it is nevertheless aimed at Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis.

Interestingly, the bill is considered an amendment to the Israeli penal code. Despite the fact that Israel has not outlawed death penalty till this very day (limited to certain crimes), its implementation has nevertheless been effectively abolished, as the last person executed was Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi officer and participant in the crimes of the Jewish Holocaust, in 1962.

Ben Gvir applied immense pressure to advance the bill, threatening to withdraw his party from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition if the law were not put to a vote. He said that “history will hold accountable anyone who dares to raise a finger” against the prisoner execution bill, adding that “I expect all coalition factions to put politics aside and support this law, which represents a historic step against terrorism.” Ultimately, the PM yielded to Ben Gvir’s demands, effectively supporting the bill.

Will the bill serve its intended cause?

The National Security Committee claimed that the bill’s “purpose is to cut off terrorism at its root and create a heavy deterrent.” However, one must ask: does it truly deter crime and violence? Does it truly create a safer and more secure society?

Numerous studies and reports from various international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, have revealed that death penalty has no unique deterrent effect on crime. According to Death Penalty Information Center, 2004 in the United States, the average murder rate for states that resorted to death penalty was above 5 per 100,000 of the population as against around 4 per 100,000 in states that refrained from adopting it. Likewise, in 2003 in Canada, 27 years after the country abolished the death penalty the murder rate had fallen by 44% since 1975, when capital punishment was still enforced. These facts and statistics prove that there is no correlation between death penalty and reduced crime rates.

The reason behind the lack of the aforementioned correlation is clear: criminals do not anticipate the consequences of their actions. When committing a certain crime, individuals are often, and most likely, driven by immediate, fleeting emotional considerations. They are not influenced or deterred by the ultimate consequences of their crimes, even if it were to be capital punishment. Instead, the latter can even increase the likelihood of committing further violence, as the criminal, having knowingly committed a capital offence, would no longer have any interest in lessening their potential punishment by not committing further murders or other offences.

Furthermore, death penalty could be a cause for injustice for many convicts. The latter could be falsely accused, either by mistake or deliberately for political considerations. This leads to the adoption of an irreversible decision which would end the prisoner’s very own life without having the privilege of backtracking on a potentially false accusation. Aside from this, capital punishment stands against Article 3 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which calls for upholding the “right to life” for everyone. It also contradicts various international frameworks which call for progressively restricting the use of death penalty, such as the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) adopted in 1989 as well as numerous United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions.

From here, the proposed Israeli execution bill would not achieve security and would not deter violence. Instead, it will only widen the divide between Israelis and Palestinians, fuel animosity and allow for injustice to take place. Therefore, the only way that the two people can live side by side in peace and security is for them to achieve a sincere reconciliation. This can be done through education, awareness campaigns, reconciliation commissions, promoting a culture of tolerance and mutual acceptance, and most importantly acknowledging both sides’ concerns, sufferings and ambitions.

Until that is fulfilled, true security, peace and prosperity would not materialize, neither in Israel nor in Palestine.