Several Islamic nations, among them Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Indonesia, on Thursday strongly condemned the approval of a death penalty bill targeting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, warning that the move could threaten “regional stability”.
The criticism came in a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
“This legislation constitutes a dangerous escalation, particularly given its discriminatory application against Palestinian prisoners, and stressed that such measures risk further exacerbating tensions and undermining regional stability,” the statement read.
The controversial legislation, approved by Israel’s parliament late Monday, provides that Palestinians convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks labelled as “acts of terrorism” will face the death penalty.
The bill has already drawn condemnation from the United Nations and the European Union. However, the United States defended the move, saying it supports “Israel’s sovereign right to determine its own laws”.
Critics have also pointed out that many of the countries opposing the law still maintain the death penalty within their own legal systems. Saudi Arabia alone reportedly carried out 356 executions in 2025.
Under the new legislation, Palestinians in the West Bank found guilty by military courts of deadly attacks deemed to be “terrorism” would automatically face execution as the default punishment.
Since Palestinians in the occupied territory are routinely prosecuted in Israeli military courts, the law effectively creates a separate and more severe legal pathway for them.
By contrast, Israeli civilian courts retain the option of imposing either the death penalty or life imprisonment for individuals convicted of killing with the intention of harming the state.
Israel has only enforced capital punishment twice in its history, first in 1948, shortly after the country’s establishment, when a military captain was executed for high treason, and again in 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, while violence in the territory has intensified sharply since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
