The law: detention, trial and the death penalty

“I worked as a technical nurse in the operating room at al-Awda Hospital,” Ibrahim Fuda told B’Tselem. On Feb. 14, 2025, a Red Cross delegation arrived at the prison, and he was released that same month.

I met once with a lawyer from a human rights organization who came to the prison and asked me about my condition.

Ibrahim Fuda, in testimony to B’Tselem

“Before I was arrested, I weighed 87 kilograms,” he said. “During my detention I lost 25 kilograms.”

B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, took his testimony through its field researcher Muhammad Sabah on Oct. 9, 2025. It appeared in January 2026 in the group’s report “Living Hell,” among new testimonies from 21 released Palestinian prisoners.

Since November 2023, the Israel Prison Service figures published by HaMoked, an Israeli rights group, have included Palestinians from the Gaza Strip held under Israel’s Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law of 2002.

In November 2023, according to government data reported by HaMoked, Israel held 2,313 sentenced prisoners, 2,321 people held pending trial or sentencing and 2,070 administrative detainees, as well as 105 people from Gaza held as “unlawful combatants.” By September 2025, it held 11,040 Palestinian “security” prisoners, “the most Israel has ever held,” HaMoked said. Of those, 3,577 were in administrative detention and 2,662 were held as “unlawful combatants.” “Security” is the Israel Prison Service’s own classification.

As of October 2026, HaMoked says, Israel holds 9,265 “security” inmates in prisons inside Israel: 1,509 sentenced prisoners, 3,236 held pending trial or sentencing, 3,101 administrative detainees “held without trial,” and 1,419 people held as “unlawful combatants.” At the end of December 2025, the Hebrew news site Ha-Makom put the number held under the law at 1,287.

Nine Knesset members voted for the amendment on Dec. 18, 2023, with none against and no abstentions, and it was set as a temporary order for four months, the Hebrew news site MivzakLive reported. It has been extended ever since. In January 2026, The Jerusalem Post said the measures had “since been extended six times,” most recently on Dec. 25, 2025, through March 31, 2026. In March 2026, Ha-Makom wrote that the temporary order had been “changed and extended four times” and was now facing a fifth extension. Neither source explains the difference in the count.

In early October 2026, Israel’s government extended by two months the declaration that triggers the special arrangements, from Sept. 30 to Nov. 30, saying “conditions on the ground still justify extending the declaration,” The Jerusalem Post reported. If the declaration expires, the paper wrote, “existing decisions preventing detainees from meeting with lawyers would expire immediately.” It added: “Thousands of unlawful combatants remain in detention, including detainees for whom permanent detention orders have not yet been issued.”

The conditional order of June 17, 2026, was issued by Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit and Justices Daphne Barak-Erez and Ruth Ronnen. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel wrote that it requires the state “to justify provisions delaying judicial review of the detention of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza.”

Before the Sixth Amendment, the temporary periods were longer. The amendment “slightly reduced some timeframes — shortening temporary detention warrants from 30 days to 25, requiring initial judicial review within 40 days instead of 45, and limiting the prevention of meetings with lawyers to 25 days rather than 45,” The Jerusalem Post reported. The draft of the Sixth Amendment, on the Israeli government’s agenda for Dec. 11, 2025, was to run until March 31, 2026. In June 2026, the Post still described the 40-day wait, and 30 days for a child, as “the current framework.”

On June 18, the paper wrote that a first draft of a later amendment would have shortened the wait for a judge, but that “the final version of the amendment left the existing timeframes in place.” On Oct. 2, 2026, it wrote of “the latest amendment to the temporary provision, which entered into effect on July 1”: a permanent detention order “must be signed within 18 days of detention, or within 10 days in the case of a minor.” “The periods before judicial review were shortened by seven days,” it added, and the longest a detainee can be kept from a lawyer was cut too, by an amount it did not give. The paper does not explain how the two reports fit together.

We found neither the text of the July 1 amendment nor the dates it was passed and expires (as of Oct. 11, 2026).

On Oct. 22, 2023, an Israeli court was due to hear Firas Hassan’s appeal against his administrative detention order.

That day, he told B’Tselem, the guards took the prisoners one at a time, to a room where they watched the court proceedings on Zoom.

B’Tselem field researcher Basel al-Adra took the testimony on April 24, 2024. It was published in August 2024 in B’Tselem’s report “Welcome to Hell.”

The law is called “Holding Hearings by Video Conference.” The association’s petition to Israel’s High Court, No. 5586-07-26, followed a letter it sent to the attorney general on March 23, 2026.

I had a remote court hearing over Zoom. My detention was extended until further notice under the classification of “unlawful combatant.”

Muhammad Khader, 36, a father of five from ‘Izbet Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in testimony to B’Tselem (Nov. 12, 2025)

Other B’Tselem testimonies describe hearings on Zoom in the first months of the war. Z.A., an administrative detainee from East Jerusalem, was arrested on Oct. 12, 2023, and moved to al-Naqab (Ketziot) prison. “Every time, they would take me at 8:00 A.M. to the room where I attended the hearing, which started at 2:00 P.M., via Zoom,” he said.

Muhammad Salah, 27, from Burqa, near Nablus, was held in Megiddo prison. “Throughout the entire period of detention, I didn’t meet with a lawyer,” he told B’Tselem. “I also didn’t see my parents or other family members, because they canceled visits altogether.”

“Deadly terrorist acts” is The Times of Israel’s phrase. On the day of the vote, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel published a Q&A on the law, then still a bill. Palestinians “convicted of terror-related murder in military courts in the territories would face a mandatory death sentence,” it said, and “The Military Commander would not have the authority to exercise discretion and offer pardons or commute sentences.”

The two sources disagree on the right of appeal. The Times of Israel wrote that the law passed “while eliminating any right of appeal.” The association wrote: “The defendant would have the right to appeal the death sentence.”

Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army’s Central Command, signed the military order, and the law “came into effect Sunday night,” May 17, 2026, The Times of Israel reported. On the day the law passed, the paper noted that “only Palestinians are tried in military courts.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel explained the other track: “In Israeli courts, a person convicted of terror-related murder committed with the intent to eradicate the State of Israel would be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.” In the military track, then, death is a mandatory sentence; in the civilian track, it is one of two.

The vote took place on May 11, 2026, The Times of Israel reported. “The bill passed 93-0 in Israel’s 120-seat parliament,” Al Jazeera wrote. Trials “will be open to the public and broadcast on a website set up for that purpose,” The Times of Israel wrote. The genocide charges would be brought under Israel’s 1950 Law for the Prevention of Genocide.

On Oct. 7, 2026, The Times of Israel reported that the trial process faced delays, and that Simcha Rothman, a Knesset member, wanted the first indictments filed “in the first half of 2027.” The Algemeiner wrote on Oct. 8 that “there has yet to be a full criminal accounting of the events in a courtroom.”

On May 19, 2026, after the military order was signed, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a request with Israel’s High Court. The court rejected it the next day “because there is currently no concrete case to which the order’s provisions would apply,” the association said.

On Aug. 20, 2026, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced that ground had been broken on a gallows, The Times of Israel reported. “It is unclear, however, if the legislation will lead to automatic death penalty sentences,” the paper wrote. On Sept. 28, it wrote that “nobody has been executed under it yet, and some observers say it will not be used in practice.”