Union for Justice: The Israeli law constitutes a dangerous escalation and a new war crime against prisoners
08/11/2025 – Union for Justice Foundation
What has become known as the “Law to Execute Palestinian Prisoners,” approved in its first reading by the National Security Committee of the Israeli Knesset, marks an alarming precedent in the history of Israeli legislation. This law grants legal cover for killing Palestinian detainees either inside prisons or following trials that lack even the most basic standards of justice. It not only legitimizes direct execution, but also paves the way for a new phase of systematic violence against Palestinian prisoners, who are already enduring inhumane conditions amounting to a form of slow death.
Through research and interviews conducted by the Union for Justice Foundation, testimonies from former detainees reveal horrifying accounts of the physical and psychological torture inflicted on prisoners inside Israeli prisons and interrogation centers. These abuses include severe beatings, sleep deprivation, continuous humiliation, starvation, and the deliberate withdrawal of medical care. All of this is compounded by a sweeping policy of denying visits—including those by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been banned from entering Israeli detention facilities under measures specifically targeting Palestinian fighters who are supposed to be protected under international humanitarian law. This ban is not a routine administrative step; it is a deliberate violation of law and ethics, stripping prisoners of their fundamental right to connect with the outside world and severing their last link to international protection.
Observers confirm that what is happening inside Israeli prisons today is nothing more than the gradual implementation of what the proposed law seeks: turning prisoners into victims of slow, legalized killing. Scenes of systematic starvation, deprivation of water and medicine, and the denial of medical care constitute, in essence, silent executions designed to exhaust the body and extinguish the will—what some human rights experts have described as “delayed execution.” In the same context, special courts have recently been established for prisoners from the Gaza Strip. These courts lack any judicial safeguards; detainees are tried in closed sessions without legal representation or independent oversight, rendering their rulings devoid of any legal legitimacy. This dangerous deviation from the path of justice represents a deliberate destruction of the principle of the rule of law and transforms the judiciary into an instrument of the military establishment.
Amid these violations, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs expressed its unequivocal rejection of the proposed law, describing it as “a license for the deliberate killing of Palestinian prisoners.” The Commission stressed that what is happening inside the prisons amounts to slow killing and systematic extermination through torture, starvation, and medical neglect. It called on the international community to intervene immediately to protect the prisoners and launch an independent investigation into the crimes committed against them. Similarly, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club argued that the law crowns years of Israeli policy aimed at eliminating the prisoner issue and denying their legal status as protected fighters under the Geneva Conventions, noting that the testimonies of recently released detainees expose practices that amount to war crimes.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an official statement, asserted that the proposed execution law constitutes a full-fledged war crime and violates all international legal norms. The Ministry warned that the silence of the international community emboldens Israel to continue its criminal policies and called on the United Nations and the Human Rights Council to dispatch urgent investigative committees to Israeli prisons. Likewise, international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch expressed deep concern over this dangerous development, stating that the passage of such a law represents an attempt to legitimize mass executions. They noted that the deprivation, starvation, and torture occurring inside Israeli prisons constitute a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and called for holding Israeli officials accountable before the International Criminal Court.
The legal team of the Union for Justice concluded that Israel’s actions—past and ongoing—constitute war crimes. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 stipulates that prisoners and detainees during wartime are fully protected from killing, torture, and inhumane treatment. Common Article (3) of the four Geneva Conventions strictly prohibits “violence to life and person, particularly murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture,” while Article (126) affirms the right of International Committee of the Red Cross representatives to regularly visit detainees. Depriving prisoners of these rights amounts to a grave breach of the Convention and places Israel under international legal responsibility as an occupying power. Moreover, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies deliberate killing, torture, execution without fair trial, and cruel treatment as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Therefore, both the proposed execution law and Israel’s practices against prisoners constitute a complete legal crime warranting international prosecution.
These practices cannot be separated from the broader political context in which the Israeli occupation seeks to erase the human and legal status of Palestinian prisoners, reducing them to numbers without rights or dignity. The new law, alongside field policies and restrictions, reflects an official agenda aimed at ending the prisoner issue through both physical and psychological elimination. Persisting in this approach threatens not only the lives of thousands of detainees, but also undermines the entire international legal system designed to protect human beings during wartime. Remaining silent in the face of these actions implies acceptance of the legalization of killing as state policy, transforming the law from an instrument of justice into a tool of crime.
End.
