In the devastated streets of Gaza in early April 2026, a Palestinian father stared into the eyes of his four-year-old daughter and delivered a final, haunting message that has since circulated widely on social media across the Arab world and beyond: “My daughter, we will meet in heaven now.” He was not succumbing to illness or an accidental death. He was facing imminent execution under Israel’s newly enacted “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law,” passed by the Knesset on March 30, 2026. The law mandates hanging as the default sentence for Palestinians convicted in Israeli military courts of “terrorism-related” offences, courts that operate under occupation rules and maintain a near-100% conviction rate for Palestinian defendants. Israeli citizens and settlers are explicitly excluded from its harshest provisions. This father’s farewell is not an isolated tragedy. It is emblematic of a systematic policy of elimination that has drawn condemnation from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and legal experts worldwide as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
Executions and the Machinery of Collective Punishment
The March 30 law marks a dangerous escalation. It applies almost exclusively to Palestinians tried in military courts in the occupied territories, requiring sentences to be carried out within 90 days of a final ruling, with only narrow exceptions. Human Rights Watch described the legislation as “discriminatory” and a clear breach of international standards prohibiting the death penalty in occupied territories. These military tribunals have long been criticised by the United Nations and independent observers for lacking basic due process, including inadequate access to lawyers and evidence often based on coerced confessions or secret intelligence.
This legal innovation coincides with Israel’s continued military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, even amid fragile regional ceasefire attempts. The Gaza Health Ministry, figures repeatedly cited as credible by UN agencies, reports more than 72,000 Palestinians killed and over 170,000 injured since October 2023. A disproportionate number are women and children. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its ongoing genocide case initiated by South Africa, has issued binding provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent genocidal acts, ensure humanitarian aid, and halt operations that could destroy the Palestinian people “in whole or in part.” Israel has repeatedly defied these orders. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare and the intentional targeting of civilians.
These are not wartime excesses but deliberate policy. Israeli officials have spoken openly of rendering Gaza uninhabitable, while settlement expansion in the West Bank continues at record pace with full state backing.
The Greater Israel Project: Biblical Claim as Blueprint for Expansion
At the core of these actions lies the long-standing Zionist vision of “Greater Israel”, Eretz Yisrael Hashlema, a territorial ambition rooted in biblical narratives that stretches “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” In August 2025, Netanyahu explicitly endorsed this vision in a televised interview, declaring himself on a “historic and spiritual mission” and stating that he felt “very much” connected to the idea of Greater Israel. The concept explicitly encompasses the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and significant portions of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Far from a fringe idea, it drives official policy: illegal settlements, home demolitions, and forced displacements have accelerated under Netanyahu’s government. The International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion declared Israel’s entire presence in the occupied Palestinian territories unlawful and demanded its rapid end, along with reparations. Israel ignored the ruling and pressed ahead.
The “Chosen People” Myth and Its Deadly Extension to Lebanon
Underpinning Greater Israel is a supremacist interpretation of Jewish “chosenness”, the notion that Jews possess a divine right to the land that supersedes the rights of its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. While many Jewish communities interpret chosenness as a moral obligation toward justice, in Israeli political Zionism it has been transformed into ethnic and religious supremacy. This ideology is enshrined in laws such as the 2018 Nation-State Law, which defines Israel exclusively as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and in the dual legal system that grants full rights to Jewish settlers while subjecting Palestinians to military rule, a reality that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israeli group B’Tselem have labelled apartheid.
The same supremacist logic is now being applied beyond Palestine. In Lebanon, the “chosen people” narrative provides moral cover for relentless aggression. Just days ago, on April 8, 2026, hours after a US-Iran ceasefire was announced, Israel launched its heaviest wave of strikes in weeks, hitting dense residential and commercial areas in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon. Lebanese authorities and civil defence reported at least 254 killed and over 1,165 wounded in a single day, with many strikes occurring without warning in civilian neighbourhoods. UN human rights monitors have documented repeated civilian deaths, including women and children, in Israeli operations that continue despite fragile ceasefires. These attacks are framed by Israeli officials as necessary against Hezbollah, yet they form part of the broader Greater Israel strategy of securing “security control” over territories far beyond the 1967 lines, including southern Lebanon. Innocent Lebanese lives, like Palestinian ones, are rendered expendable in pursuit of this expansionist vision.
Global Complicity and the Cost of Silence
Despite overwhelming evidence, live-streamed destruction, ICJ rulings, ICC warrants, and UN documentation, much of the Western world has responded with little more than statements of concern. The United States continues to supply weapons and diplomatic cover. European governments maintain economic and military ties while issuing tepid rebukes. Arab states, constrained by their own alliances, have largely remained silent or suppressed domestic dissent.
This is not neutrality. It is complicity, sustained by decades of lobbying, media framing that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and geopolitical calculations that view Israel as a strategic asset. The gap between governments and their citizens, who have mobilised in unprecedented global protests, has never been starker.
A People Refusing Erasure
The Palestinian father who whispered goodbye to his four-year-old daughter embodies a nation that has endured 76 years of dispossession, 57 years of military occupation, 18 years of blockade on Gaza, and what leading legal scholars describe as a live-streamed genocide. The evidence is irrefutable: from casualty figures and court records to the public statements of Israeli leaders themselves.
Israel is not acting in legitimate self-defence. It is pursuing a project of racial and territorial supremacy that treats Palestinians, and now Lebanese civilians caught in the crossfire, as obstacles to be removed through bombardment, starvation, execution, or displacement.
History will not forget this moment. The international community’s failure to enforce its own laws undermines the entire rules-based order. True justice requires an immediate end to the occupation, accountability for war crimes, reparations, and the realisation of Palestinian rights to return, self-determination, and equality. Anything less renders global institutions a hollow farce. The Palestinian people, through their resilience amid unimaginable suffering, have already delivered their verdict: they will not be erased.
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