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Leading international human rights groups as well as organizations in Israel swiftly demanded the repeal of a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday that makes death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis — a law that one group called “discriminatory by design.”

Those were the words of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, which petitioned the country’s Supreme Court minutes after lawmakers passed an amendment to the federal penal law, “Death Penalty for Terrorists,” in a vote of 62-48.

The group called on the high court to challenge the new law and said the far-right government had passed it “without legal authority” over Palestinians in the West Bank, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government aimed to illegally annex to Israel.

The Association of Civil Rights was joined by groups including Amnesty International, which has spoken out forcefully against the legislation in recent months, in demanding the death penalty law be repealed.

Amnesty said that under the new policy, Israel — which has vehemently rejected accusations of imposing apartheid policies on Palestinians — “explicitly creates two legal frameworks for the use of the death penalty in the occupied West Bank… and in Israel.”

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The law also does not allow for any pardons for those sentenced to death, making it “one of the world’s most extreme death penalty laws,” said Amnesty.

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