- Title: UNRWA hopes for rejection of Israeli death penalty law
- Date: 31st March 2026
- Summary: ROTA, SPAIN (FILE - JUNE 15, 2022) (REUTERS) NAVY BOATS SAILING AT SEA / ARMY VESSEL IN THE BACKGROUND SOLDIERS JUMPING OFF FROM HELICOPTER INTO WATER VARIOUS OF ARMY BOATS SAILING TOWARDS BEACH AND SOLDIERS JUMPING OFF BOATS NAVY VESSELS USED TO TRANSPORT AMPHIBIOUS ARMY VEHICLES SAILING TOWARDS BEACH VARIOUS OF ARMY VEHICLE DRIVING DOWN FROM VESSEL AND ADVANCING AT BEACH
- Embargoed:
- Keywords: DEATH PENALTY FAR-RIGHT ISRAEL KNESSET LAW PALESTINIANS UNRWA
- Location: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / JERUSALEM
- City: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / JERUSALEM
- Country: Switzerland
- Topics: Europe,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA003887831032026RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The chief of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said on Tuesday (March 31) a law reinstating the death penalty in Israel would be discriminatory and said he hoped the Supreme Court would block it.
“I am not aware of any democratic country reintroducing the death penalty. We are more used to seeing countries abolish it,” Lazzarini said. “This would be an extraordinary discriminatory law, because it would target only one category of the population.”
Israel's parliament passed a law on Monday (March 30) making death by hanging a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks, fulfilling a pledge by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies.
The law would only apply to Israelis convicted of murder whose attacks aimed at "ending Israel's existence," meaning it would mete out the death penalty for Palestinians but not for Jewish Israelis who committed similar crimes, critics say.
The legislation has drawn international criticism of Israel, which is already under scrutiny for increasing violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and its war in Gaza.
Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954. The only person executed in Israel after a civilian trial was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1962.
(Production: Lauren Bacquie) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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