Preparations for the implementation of Israel’s new death penalty law have already begun. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has boasted that a new prison wing is under construction where the killings will take place, and new “red” uniforms for the Palestinian prisoners have already been ordered.
Meanwhile, the global “condemnations” have ceased. Like others, the European Union, which prides itself on high human rights standards, continues to look away. This is despite the fact that its Association Agreement with Israel has a clear clause that demands respect for human rights.
Official reactions have been nothing short of disgraceful.
When the bill was cleared by the National Security Committee of the Knesset late last month, EU spokesperson for foreign affairs, Anouar El Anouni, described the measure as “deeply concerning” and affirmed the bloc’s opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances.
Yet, in the same statement, the EU praised Israel’s supposed “previous principled position, with its obligations under international law, as well as its commitment to democratic principles”. It is as if Israel had never carried out a brutal decades-long occupation, illegal colonisation and genocidal campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. The statement then “encouraged” Israel to meet the EU’s conditions on human rights under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
On March 30, just before the final vote on the bill, European countries, including the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, issued a joint statement expressing “deep concern” about the bill, without warning of any concrete steps.
On March 31, after the bill was passed, the EU released another statement recycling its talking points, adding only that the measure represented a “grave regression” of Israel’s own commitments and practices – a claim that directly contradicts findings from EU investigations, international and Palestinian United Nations bodies, human rights organisations and the December 2024 and July 2024 advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice.
There was no mention of the Palestinian people, who are targeted by this law or the Palestinian prisoners who have suffered brutalisation and death at unprecedented levels in the past two and a half years. There was no acknowledgement of the suffering of the families of Palestinian detainees.
My own family reacted with a mix of heartbreak and bitter familiarity when the bill passed. We were sickened, but not surprised. My father was a freedom fighter in his youth and spent 14 years in Israeli jails for resisting the occupation before being released in a prisoner exchange. I could not help but imagine my father’s story unfolding in today’s reality.
He would be one of the many Palestinian political prisoners awaiting execution after a ruling from a military court that finds 99 percent of Palestinian defendants “guilty”. He would be punished for simply rejecting colonial domination, for standing up for his rights and the rights of his people. And in today’s reality, the very institutions that claim to represent me and all European citizens, in the name of democratic values and human rights, would be complicit in allowing his execution.
It is important to note that the EU’s stance is neither surprising nor a diplomatic mistake. It is yet another confirmation that the EU’s professed commitment to human rights ends where Israel’s impunity begins.
The contrast is especially stark when compared with the EU’s position towards other allies and adversaries. It has repeatedly condemned the use of the death penalty in Iran, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and recently, in Russian‑occupied Donetsk. In each of these cases, the EU has clearly linked the death penalty to broader violations of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, and to the wider contexts in which each case is found.
The hypocrisy became even more striking when the decision was made to pause discussions on sanctions and the revision of the EU-Israel Association Agreement after the US-brokered so‑called “ceasefire” in Gaza in October 2025.
Since then, Israel has continued to defy international law and violate human rights, expanding its occupation to over 50 percent of Gaza’s territory, advancing settlement construction in occupied Palestinian land, banning and attacking UNRWA facilities built with EU funds, expelling international humanitarian NGOs from the Gaza Strip, forcibly displacing tens of thousands in the occupied West Bank, and hundreds of thousands in Lebanon, and Iran, and shutting down access to holy sites in Jerusalem. The well-documented list of violations only continues to grow.
But the EU can no longer ignore them because European citizens are increasingly rejecting Israeli impunity.
More than one million Europeans have signed the petition of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “Justice for Palestine”, calling for the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, making it the fastest-growing ECI to date. This demand has also been endorsed by over 60 human rights and humanitarian organisations, as well as more than 350 former diplomats.
The EU cannot continue to drift further from both its legal obligations and the clear demands of its people. It must act decisively. At the Foreign Affairs Council on April 21, several European states will again put the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the table. This is no longer a technical debate. It is a test of political will.
The rest of the EU member states face a simple choice: act, or remain complicit. Anything short of suspension is a failure to uphold EU law, a betrayal of its stated values, and a dismissal of the growing public demand across Europe to end Israeli impunity and deliver justice for the Palestinians.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
