Key Muslim-majority countries, including Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Indonesia Thursday condemned approval of a death penalty bill for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, warning the move threatens "regional stability."
The statement was released by the foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
"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 joint statement read.
Under the law passed by Israel's parliament late Monday, Palestinians convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks classified as "acts of terrorism" will face the death penalty.
The law has been criticized by the United Nations and European Union, while the United States came out in support of "Israel's sovereign right to determine its own laws."
Under the new law, Palestinians in the West Bank convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks classified as "terrorism" will face the death penalty as a default sentence.
Because Palestinians in the territory are automatically tried in Israeli military courts, the measure effectively creates a separate and harsher legal track.
In Israeli civilian courts, the law allows for either death or life imprisonment for those convicted of killing with the intent to harm the state.
Israel has applied the death penalty only twice: in 1948, shortly after the state's founding, against a military captain accused of high treason and then in 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence there has soared since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, incursion into southern Israel triggered the genocidal Gaza war.
