Most human rights organizations, B’Tselem among them, view the death penalty as a violation of every person’s fundamental right to life – and as cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment – and urge all states to revoke the penalty completely. Many states have already signed the optional protocols to some international human rights conventions, which completely ban the death penalty.

The Palestinian Authority’s statutes allow the death penalty, its courts have imposed the death penalty, and the sentence has been executed. The Palestinian Penal Code applying in the West Bank enables imposition of the death penalty on a person who was convicted of committing any of seventeen offenses, while in the Gaza Strip, fifteen offenses warrant the death penalty. The two penal laws are implemented by ordinary civil courts.

Also, the Palestinian Authority also imposes the death penalty pursuant to the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code, of 1979. The code enables imposition of the death penalty on a person who is convicted of any of forty-two offenses and is applied by special courts operated by the Palestinian Authority: military courts and state security courts. These special courts are responsible for the vast majority of death sentences imposed by the Palestinian Authority.

Imposition of the death penalty in the Palestinian judicial system contravenes international law in several ways: 1) the number of offenses for which the death sentence may be imposed is extremely broad and inconsistent with the requirement that the list be restricted to the most grievous crimes; 2) the trials in the special courts deny defendants the elementary rules of due process. The trials are in effect “field trials” in which the defendants are not given any meaningful opportunity to defend themselves; and 3) the Palestinian Authority offers no judicial procedure to appeal the sentence given by the special courts, and only the president of the Palestinian Authority has the power to alter the sentence.