Israel has approved the death penalty for Palestinians but not for Israelis who commit the same crime.

The controversial bill, which was passed on Monday, makes execution a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly terror attacks.

Sixty-two lawmakers, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, voted in favour, with 48 against the controversial bill which has been condemned by Britain.

Britain, France, Germany and Italy expressed “deep concern” over the bill on Sunday, which they said risked “undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles”.

In the run-up to the vote, hard-Right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir  had worn a lapel pin in the shape of a noose, symbolising his support for the legislation.

“We made history!!! We promised. We delivered,” he posted on X after the vote.

The bill will make the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed “acts of terrorism” by an Israeli military court.

It says that the sentence may be reduced to life imprisonment under “special circumstances”.

A ​group of UN experts said that the bill ⁠included vague definitions of “terrorist”, meaning the death penalty could be meted out over “conduct that is not genuinely terrorist” in nature.

The bill sets the execution method as hanging, adding that it should be carried out within 90 days of the sentencing, with a possible postponement of up to 180 days.

Call for law to be annulled

The bill appears to conflict with Israel’s Basic Laws, which prohibit arbitrary discrimination.

Shortly after it was passed, a leading human rights group announced that it had filed a petition with the Supreme Court demanding the legislation’s annulment.

“The law creates two parallel tracks, both designed to apply to Palestinians,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said in a statement.

“In military courts – which have jurisdiction over West Bank Palestinians – it establishes a near-mandatory death sentence,” the rights group said.

In civilian courts, the law’s stipulation that defendants must have acted “with the aim of negating the existence” of Israel “structurally excludes Jewish perpetrators”, the group added.

During the debate in parliament, Ram Ben Barak, an opposition lawmaker and former deputy Mossad director, expressed outrage at the legislation.

“Do you understand what it means that there is one law for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and a different law for the general public for which the State of Israel is responsible?” he asked fellow parliamentarians, using the Israeli name for the West Bank.

“It says that Hamas has defeated us. It has defeated us because we have lost all our values.”

The legislation was introduced by Limor Son Har-Melech, a lawmaker from Ben Gvir’s party who years ago survived an attack by Palestinian militants in which her husband was killed.

“For years, we endured a cruel cycle of terror, imprisonment, release in reckless deals, and the return of these human monsters to murder Jews again,” she said. “And today, my friends, this cycle has come full circle.”

The Palestinian Authority condemned the law’s adoption, saying that “Israel has no sovereignty over Palestinian land”.

“This law once again reveals the nature of the Israeli colonial system, which seeks to legitimise extrajudicial killing under legislative cover,” it added.

In February, Amnesty International urged Israeli lawmakers to reject the legislation, citing its “discriminatory application against Palestinians”.

Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954. The only person ever executed in Israel after a civilian trial was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, in 1962.