Israel’s death penalty law institutionalizes apartheid: Legalized racial hierarchy in occupied territories amid global impunity

Palestinian indigeneity is erased in mainstream discourse, which frames the conflict as a 'national security' issue rather than a struggle for land, sovereignty, and cultural survival. Indigenous Palestinian knowledge systems—such as sumud (steadfastness), hikaye (oral storytelling), and the right of return—offer frameworks for resistance that predate Western legal categories. The death penalty law is a direct attack on Palestinian collective memory and futurity, as it seeks to erase Palestinian presence through demographic and legal violence.

The death penalty law is the latest iteration of a legal regime that has evolved since the 1948 Nakba, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled to create a Jewish-majority state. Apartheid as a legal structure was codified in South Africa in 1948 and later adopted by Israel in the 1967 occupation, with the 2024 ICJ advisory opinion confirming its applicability to Israel. Historical parallels exist in U.S. Jim Crow laws, Australia’s White Australia Policy, and Canada’s residential school system, all of which used legal violence to enforce racial hierarchies.

The Palestinian struggle is part of a global anti-colonial tradition that includes the Algerian revolution, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and Indigenous resistance in the Americas. In India, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) have been criticized as 'apartheid-like' policies targeting Muslim minorities, drawing parallels to Israel’s legal discrimination. The framing of 'security' to justify racialized violence is a tactic used by settler-colonial states worldwide, from Australia to Canada.

Human rights organizations (Amnesty, HRW, B'Tselem) and the UN have documented Israel’s apartheid regime using empirical evidence, including legal frameworks, demographic policies, and spatial control mechanisms. The death penalty law’s selective application violates international law (ICCPR, Geneva Conventions) and aligns with patterns of state violence documented in criminological studies of racialized policing. The law’s deterrent effect is unproven, while its punitive function aligns with research on colonial control mechanisms.

Palestinian art, poetry, and music—from Mahmoud Darwish’s verses to the embroidery of the Palestinian keffiyeh—resist the erasure of Palestinian identity under apartheid. The death penalty law is an attack on Palestinian futurity, which is sustained through cultural practices like dabke dancing, olive harvesting, and oral histories. Spiritual resistance, such as the sumud of the Bedouin communities in the Naqab/Negev, challenges the legal violence of the state with a commitment to land and community.

The law accelerates a one-state apartheid reality, where Palestinians are permanently excluded from political participation while Israeli settlers enjoy full rights. If unchecked, this could lead to increased resistance, international isolation, and potential collapse of the two-state framework, as predicted by scenario modeling from the International Crisis Group. The law also emboldens far-right settler movements, increasing the risk of mass displacement and ethnic cleansing.

Palestinian voices—from prisoners facing execution to mothers in Gaza—are systematically excluded from mainstream narratives that center Israeli security narratives. Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Israelis, and Palestinian citizens of Israel face discrimination within the state but are often pitted against Palestinians in divide-and-rule tactics. Global South solidarity movements, particularly in South Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world, are key to challenging the apartheid regime but are sidelined in Western media.