UNDER Israel’s new death penalty law, Palestinian children, like adults, could find themselves facing the gallows. This might take some by surprise or even be dismissed as an exaggeration. Sadly, it is neither.
The 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 organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
It resolves a long-standing political demand by Israel’s far-right leadership to formalise execution as a tool of control over Palestinians. As extremist 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. They are often treated as adults within a system that offers few safeguards and operates with an extremely high conviction rate.
Defence for Children International-Palestine reported in its 2023 briefing, “Arbitrary by Default,” that the Israeli military detention system subjects Palestinian minors to “systematic, institutionalised and widespread ill-treatment.”
Reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights organisations 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 and 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 pre-emptively stripping children of their civilian status.
Israeli officials have made such views unmistakably clear.
In 2014, lawmaker and future 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.” This was not an aberration but a reflection of a political discourse in which dehumanisation is normalised.
This has often been dismissed as routine racism in Israeli politics. It is not.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza’s children have been killed in staggering numbers: at least 21,289 children are among the more than 71,800 Palestinians killed, while 44,500-plus have been wounded, according to UNICEF’s February 2026 update.
In the West Bank, the pattern persists, with Palestinian children increasingly killed during Israeli military raids and settler violence.
With 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 about neither punishment nor deterrence. Israel does not require a law to kill Palestinians — whether they are engaged in armed resistance or, as has often been the case, are 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. 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 death penalty law is, therefore, 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 emphasised 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 is normalised, the threshold will shift again. And children will inevitably be drawn into it.
Israel has already normalised practices once deemed unthinkable. If it normalises the execution of children, it will cross a threshold not even many colonial regimes openly breached.
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.
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Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
