When ‘Life’ Does Not Mean Life: Why Israel Turned to the Death Penalty

Netanel Shukrun went to a spring with his eldest son ahead of Yom Kippur.

He never came home.

The Israeli father of six was shot near Neve Tzuf on Sunday. Despite desperate attempts to save him, he died of his wounds. Israeli forces subsequently apprehended the suspected gunman at a hospital near Ramallah.

The suspect is entitled to due process but should he be convicted, his case will inevitably become part of Israel’s newly transformed debate about capital punishment.

In March, the Knesset passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law by 62 votes to 48, with one abstention.

Its passage did not emerge in a vacuum. Nor can it simply be dismissed as ideological drift or Israel abandoning its principles.

It emerged from decades of terrorism, hostage taking and prisoner exchanges that have created a problem most Western democracies have never had to confront.

For decades, Israel displayed remarkable restraint on capital punishment. The country’s single execution remains Adolf Eichmann in 1962, for his central role in implementing the Final Solution and the systematic murder of six million Jews.

Even through decades of terrorism, Israel resisted making execution a conventional punishment even the law existed.

Then came October 7.

1,200 people were killed in the Hamas led attacks and around 250 were taken hostage. It exposed, with horrifying clarity, an uncomfortable vulnerability in the Israeli justice system.

A terrorist sentenced to life imprisonment can acquire a bargaining currency.

Israel’s enemies know how much the country values the lives of its citizens. They also know Israel’s history of paying extraordinary prices to bring them home.

In 2011, Israel released 1,027 prisoners in return for one soldier, Gilad Shalit.

It demonstrated something admirable about Israeli society. One Israeli life mattered enough for its government to make an almost unimaginable concession.

But it also demonstrated something dangerous.

Kidnapping Israelis works.

And if a ‘life sentence’ can be overturned through hostage taking, what exactly does ‘life’ mean?

Ask the family of Malki Roth.

Malki was a Melbourne-born 15 year old murdered in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem.

Ahlam Tamimi was convicted for her role in the attack and sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences.

Sixteen.

Yet Tamimi is not in an Israeli prison.

She was released in the Shalit exchange and returned to Jordan.

Imagine explaining that to Malki’s parents. Your daughter is murdered. The woman convicted for her role in that murder receives 16 life sentences. And a decade later she walks free because terrorists have taken another Israeli hostage.

This is the reality behind Israel’s death penalty debate.

Its supporters are not merely asking whether a terrorist murderer deserves to die. They are asking something considerably more difficult. What punishment remains permanent when imprisonment itself can become negotiating currency?

There is another part of this equation Western governments should confront: money.

For years, the Palestinian Authority operated its controversial prisoner payment system, routinely described by critics as ‘pay-for-slay’. Payments to prisoners and families became deeply controversial because benefits under the old arrangements were associated with factors including length of imprisonment and the number of victims.

In February 2025, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced the old system would be abolished and replaced with a needs based social welfare scheme.

Western governments welcomed the reform.

There is just one inconvenient problem.

Questions persist over whether the payments disappeared or whether they continued through successor arrangements. Just a rebranded system that fools western ideological leaders.

That is not merely an allegation emanating from Jerusalem. In March this year, a member of the European Parliament formally asked the European Commission whether ‘pay-for-slay type payments or successor schemes’ remained operational through ‘renamed social-welfare channels’.

The same question raised something Western governments should find particularly uncomfortable. Western funding can free up money elsewhere.

Australia continues to provide substantial assistance for Palestinian humanitarian relief, recovery and institutions. In July, the Albanese government announced a further $25 million in funding intended, among other things, to strengthen Palestinian institutions and public financial management.

Canberra insists Australian money does not fund prisoner payments.

That distinction matters. There is no basis for claiming that Penny Wong is personally writing cheques to terrorists or that a particular Australian aid dollar can simply be traced into a prisoner’s account.

But that is not the end of the argument.

When outside governments finance one area of expenditure, domestic resources can potentially be freed for another. So, indirectly, Australia and others are funding the pay-for-slay program.

The Albanese government itself acknowledges the underlying problem. Its July announcement said the Palestinian Authority had committed to ‘terminate prisoner payments’.

But have they?

If the objectionable payments have ceased, independently verify it.

If convicted terrorists and their families continue receiving payments through successor arrangements, however, changing the administrative machinery does not resolve the controversy.

Abolition should mean abolition.

It should not mean changing the name on the door.

Consider how the broader system looks to an Israeli family.

A terrorist murders your child.

He is arrested and receives life imprisonment.

His imprisonment may bring financial support to himself or his family under Palestinian arrangements.

Then another terrorist organisation kidnaps Israelis.

Your child’s murderer suddenly has bargaining value.

And if history repeats itself, he may eventually walk free.

That is an incentive structure supporters of Israel’s death-penalty law argue Western critics too often refuse to confront.

Capital punishment nevertheless raises profound objections.

An execution cannot be reversed. A wrongful conviction becomes an irreversible injustice. There is legitimate debate over whether execution provides greater deterrence than permanent imprisonment. Critics also argue that executing terrorists risks creating martyrs rather than deterring imitators. The reality is, the moment they carry out an attack, they become martyrs.

Those objections deserve serious consideration.

But so does Israel’s predicament.

Western governments can oppose capital punishment as a matter of principle. What they cannot reasonably do is pretend Israel confronts the same circumstances they do.

Australia does not routinely confront terrorist organisations kidnapping Australians to exchange them for convicted murderers. Australian murderers serving life sentences do not generally acquire strategic value to armed organisations seeking their release.

Israel has lived with precisely that calculation.

And now there is Netanel Shukrun.

A father of six went with his son to immerse himself before Yom Kippur and was shot dead. Hamas subsequently praised the attack, although it did not claim responsibility.

His alleged killer is now in Israeli custody.

If that man is convicted after full due process, Israel will confront the question its new law was designed to answer.

Should he receive a life sentence knowing that, in Israel, history has demonstrated that ‘life’ does not necessarily mean life?

Or should the punishment for the deliberate terrorist murder of an innocent civilian be one that no hostage negotiation can ever overturn?

Israel has made its legislative choice.

Its critics are entitled to challenge it.

But before Western governments lecture Israelis about restraint, perhaps they should first answer the question that decades of prisoner exchanges have left behind.

If a life sentence cannot guarantee imprisonment for life, what punishment does?