Following a debate on abolishing the death penalty on Thursday 23 April, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted 112 to 14 in favour of a resolution condemning the Israeli Knesset’s adoption of a law that “has clear discriminatory effects against Palestinians” and represents “a clear setback in Israel’s long-standing stance on the use of the death penalty”.
This law - which is currently the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court - is “incompatible with the values of the Council of Europe”, states the text.
“These facts should be duly taken into consideration in the report pending in the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy regarding the possible suspension of Israel’s observer status with the Assembly”, stressed rapporteur Gala Veldhoen (Socialist, Dutch) during the debate, referring to the report being prepared by Portugal’s Ricardo Carvalho (EPP).
Initiated in October 2025 based on a motion for a resolution tabled by Belgian MEP Benjamin Dalle (EPP) in the midst of the Gaza conflict, this report will be subject to an accelerated procedure decided by the Assembly’s Bureau and could even be debated at the plenary session next June.
As the only body empowered to do so, the Assembly’s Committee on Political Affairs could then propose suspending the Knesset’s observer status, a prerogative not available to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, which authored the Veldhoen report.
The motion for suspension tabled in this context by French MEPs Emmanuel Fernandes and Gabrielle Cathala (GUE) was therefore not adopted, unlike another of their amendments, which called for an opinion from the Venice Commission on the “compatibility” of the law adopted by the Knesset “with [...] the constitutional standards of Council of Europe member States in the field of human rights, in particular the principle of non-discrimination, the right to life and the right to a fair trial”.
The “clear discriminatory effects against Palestinians” are already denounced in the resolution already adopted and calls on the United States and Japan, which also hold observer status with the Assembly, to introduce a moratorium on executions, a moratorium already observed by the Palestinian Authority, which has “Partner for Democracy” status with the Assembly.
Link to the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/lno (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)