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05-04-2026
CAIRO/ ISTANBUL: Eight Muslim-majority countries have issued a joint statement that “strongly condemned” Israel’s one-sided bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of fatal attacks.
Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates condemned “increasingly discriminatory, escalating Israeli practices that entrench a system of apartheid”, according to the joint statement released by Islamabad on Thursday.
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the controversial bill on Monday, a one-sided law that will not impose the same penalty on Jewish Israelis convicted of killings.
Its passage marks a major victory for Israel’s far right, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir having pushed for its enactment as one of the main conditions of his Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party’s coalition agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The eight countries also expressed “deep concern” over the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention, warning of mounting risks amid reports of “ongoing abuses, including torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, starvation, and the denial of basic rights”.
The statement read that these practices reflect a “broader pattern of violations against the Palestinian people”.
The countries also cautioned against measures by Israel that risk further inflaming tensions on the ground.
The law has also been criticized by the United Nations and the European Union; however, Israel’s ally, the United States, came out in support of its “sovereign right to determine its own laws”.
Israel has applied the death penalty twice since its founding.
It has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and violence there by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians has soared since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in 2023.
Analysts have said that under international law, Israel’s parliament should not be legislating in the West Bank, which is not sovereign Israeli territory, despite the best efforts of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition to annex the territory to Israel.
The Israeli parliament’s approval of a legislation that seeks the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks has stoked fears among the Palestinians and drawn condemnation from the international community, dismayed at the further entrenching of what rights groups have long described as Israel’s “system of apartheid”. The law, which does not apply to Jewish citizens of Israel, was met with jubilation among its backers in the country’s far right.
France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom have all raised concerns over what many describe as the overtly racist nature of the bill, whose nature and wording appear to exclusively target Palestinians.
“We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles,” the foreign ministries wrote in a joint statement on Sunday.
Rights groups have also criticized the bill, with Amnesty International in February saying the legislation would make the death penalty “another discriminatory tool in Israel’s system of apartheid”.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday called the law discriminatory as it would primarily, if not exclusively, be applied to Palestinians.
“Israeli officials argue that the imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality. (Int’l News Desk)
