Oct. 7 attackers could face death penalty after Israel approves war crimes tribunal

admin Published: May 12, 2026 | Updated: May 12, 2026 3 minutes read

By Tal Shalev, CNN

(CNN) — Hundreds of Hamas militants accused of committing war crimes during their October 2023 attack could face the death penalty after Israel late Monday approved the creation of a special military tribunal to prosecute their cases.

The legislation received broad backing from both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition and much of the opposition, passing with 93 votes in favor and zero against.

The Israeli parliament on Monday approved in its second and third readings a bill titled the “Prosecution law for the October 7 Massacre.” The legislation creates a dedicated tribunal, operating as a military court, to handle the prosecution of roughly 400 Hamas operatives from the elite Nukhba Force who have been held in Israel since the attack, an Israeli official told CNN. In the October 7 assault led by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controlled the Gaza Strip, attackers killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostage.

The law includes a legal framework that will allow the death penalty for those convicted of genocide. The official said it could take several months until the tribunal is established and proceedings begin.

Yulia Malinovsky, one of the bill’s sponsors and a lawmaker from the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, compared the tribunal to a “modern Eichmann trial,” referring to the 1961 trial of top Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. A key architect of the Holocaust, Eichmann was convicted in a landmark trial in Israel and was executed in 1962, one of only two people to have been executed in Israel’s history.

The special tribunal will be based in Jerusalem. Its proceedings will be public and recorded via audio and video, and key hearings will be broadcast on a dedicated website. Judicial panels will be headed by sitting or retired district court judges. The bill also stipulates that funding for the defendants’ legal representation will be deducted from funds transferred to the Palestinian Authority, even though the West Bank-based authority was not involved in the October 7 attack.

Rights group objects

Adalah, an Israeli human rights organization, decried the tribunal as “fundamentally incompatible with the right to life, the presumption of innocence, judicial independence and the rule of law.”

“The legislation renders any death sentence imposed an arbitrary deprivation of life, absolutely prohibited under international law and potentially a war crime,” Adalah said in a statement before the bill’s final passage.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin said Sunday that the law would ensure “not only that justice is served, but also that the historical record of the horrific massacre — of the victims, the hostages and those responsible — will endure for generations.”

According to the bill’s explanatory notes, its purpose is “to regulate the prosecution of those responsible for acts of hostility, murder, sexual violence, abduction, and looting carried out by Hamas and its affiliates as part of the coordinated and deliberate terrorist attack against Israeli civilians beginning on October 7, 2023.” The text defines those acts as crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The legislation also covers offenses committed afterward against hostages taken to the Gaza Strip, including those killed in captivity.

The bill is separate from a capital punishment bill the Israeli government approved in March, which expanded the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism and nationalistic murders. The law has drawn sharp criticism from foreign governments, human rights groups and the Palestinian Authority, which denounced it as racist and discriminatory.