The Political Calculus of Capital Punishment in Mandatory Palestine

ABSTRACT

This article examines capital punishment in civil court cases in Mandatory Palestine (1920–1948), focusing on the British High Commissioner’s role in confirming or commuting death sentences. Drawing on a newly constructed dataset from archival records and newspaper reports, it provides the first systematic analysis of executive clemency in non-political capital cases during the Mandate. Although death sentences were formally mandatory upon conviction, their implementation depended on executive confirmation, making clemency a central arena of discretionary political decision-making. I show that outcomes varied systematically by motive. Crimes perceived as threatening state authority were more likely to result in execution, whereas killings embedded in ‘family honour’ or blood-feud contexts were often commuted. Rather than reflecting humanitarian restraint, these patterns reveal a political calculus in which officials assessed the social and political costs of execution. Capital punishment thus functioned as a flexible instrument of colonial governance rather than as a fixed legal sanction.