Part 4 of a series on the 2026 Palestinian draft constitution
The 2026 Palestinian draft constitution contains a clause that most Western observers will read past without a second thought. Article 4, under "General Provisions," states: "The principles of Islamic Sharia are a primary source for legislation."
That sounds moderate and pluralistic. It doesn't say "the primary source," just "a primary source." Many constitutions name religion as a source among others. The phrase suggests balance — Sharia alongside secular law, democratic norms, international obligations.
But that is not how the Palestinian Authority has ever interpreted the identical language in its 2003 Basic Law. And one of the men who drafted this constitution has said so explicitly.
In 2020, Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Chief Justice of the Palestinian Authority's Sharia Court, addressed the question directly. Although the PA had signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), he stated:
The Palestinian Constitution expressly states that Islamic Sharia is the primary source of legislation and that everything must be in harmony therewith. There is also a decision by the Constitutional Court whereby international agreements prevail over local laws, provided these are consistent with the Palestinian religious and cultural legacy.
The State of Palestine may not be an Islamic state, but none of its laws may contradict Islamic religious law.
This was not the opinion of an outside critic or a religious hardliner operating at the margins. Al-Habbash is the most senior Sharia judicial official in the Palestinian Authority. He is also member number six on the committee that drafted the 2026 constitution.
The man who articulated the operative doctrine — that Sharia functions not as a source but as a supreme veto over all other legal obligations — is one of the document's authors. The constitution is not ambiguous on this point. It is telling you exactly what it means through the person who helped write it.
The gap between Palestinian signature and Palestinian implementation is not speculation. It is a documented pattern spanning more than a decade.
In April 2014, the State of Palestine acceded to seven of the nine core UN human rights treaties — notably, without entering a single reservation. This was widely praised. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called it a "significant step." International human rights organizations celebrated Palestine as the only state in the Middle East and North Africa to sign CEDAW (for women's rights) without carve-outs.
The seven treaties were: CEDAW, the ICCPR (civil and political rights), the ICESCR (economic and social rights), CAT (convention against torture), CERD (racial discrimination), the CRC (rights of the child), and the CRPD (rights of persons with disabilities). All were signed "without reservations."
Under Palestinian law, a treaty gains binding domestic legal force only when published in the Official Gazette. Only CRC and CERD were published and are actual law under the Palestinian Authority. The rest of the treaties were signed, but never implemented in law.
The pattern requires no elaborate interpretation. The two treaties published are the two with the least direct conflict with Sharia. The five treaties that remain legal dead letters are precisely the five that most directly challenge Sharia-grounded practices: the prohibition on torture and cruel punishment, equal rights for women in marriage and inheritance, freedom of religion including the right to change one's faith, and equal civil and political rights regardless of sex.
The 2026 constitution enshrines this hierarchy as supreme law.
Article 82(2) establishes the legal order explicitly: ratified treaties sit above domestic legislation but below the constitution. Sharia, as Article 4, sits within the constitution itself. Therefore Sharia permanently outranks every international treaty obligation the PA has ever signed or will sign.
Article 16, the constitution's gesture toward international law more broadly, says only that the state "respects international law and the UN Charter." The language of "respects" has no legal force. It doesn't say that the state "is bound by," or "incorporates," or "applies." This is diplomatic language dressed as a legal commitment. It gives international law no enforceable domestic status whatsoever.
The PA's own Supreme Constitutional Court closed any remaining gaps in 2017 with two rulings that built a second layer of filtration. Decision No. 5 held that international conventions must be actively incorporated into national law to have any domestic force — effectively giving the PA permanent discretion over which obligations to activate. Signing treaties by itself is legally meaningless. Decision No. 4 held that implementation of conventions depends on consistency with "the national, religious, and cultural identity of the Palestinian people" — a formulation that is, in practice, a Sharia filter with additional steps.
The architecture is complete. Treaties sit below the constitution. Customary international law is something the state merely "respects." The courts have reserved a religious identity veto over whatever survives. And the man who articulated the doctrine governing all of this helped draft the document.
The practical consequences of Sharia supremacy over all legal obligations are not theoretical. They are visible in existing Palestinian law.
Under the personal status laws that govern Muslim Palestinians, inheritance follows Sharia rules: women receive half the share of male relatives. Polygamy is permitted for Muslim men. Marital rape is not a crime — the 1960 Penal Code that applies in the West Bank defines rape as applying only to a woman who is not the perpetrator's wife. The Family Protection Bill, which would have addressed domestic violence, was blocked on the grounds that it conflicted with Sharia. None of this has been amended.
Non-Muslim citizens exist within a legal framework whose primary source is explicitly not their faith. Article 37 guarantees freedom of religious practice for "followers of monotheistic religions" — but the legislation their rights depend on is shaped by Sharia. The constitution provides no mechanism by which this changes.
And for anyone who might leave Islam: the ICCPR — the treaty the PA signed and never published — guarantees the right to change one's religion. Under classical Sharia jurisprudence, apostasy is a capital offense. The PA has not published the ICCPR. It has not abolished the death penalty. The Second Optional Protocol committing it to do so was also never published.
The constitution's treatment of genocide crystallizes the entire problem in its starkest form.
Most states prohibit genocide as part of customary international humanitarian law that they automatically support in their constitutions. The Palestinian constitution only says that it "respects" international law, which is legally meaningless. So any prohibition of genocide must fit with Sharia law.
The word "genocide" does appear throughout the document, but only to accuse Israel. The preamble declares as constitutional fact that genocide is being committed against Palestinians. Article 24 mandates prosecution of the perpetrators. Article 69 states that genocide is a crime not subject to a statute of limitations. The constitution is constructed, from its preamble through its criminal law provisions, as a legal instrument for prosecuting genocide committed by others.
Nowhere in the document is there a legal path to prohibit Palestinians from performing genocide against Jews.
A constitution that weaponizes the accusation of genocide as its foundational premise — while blocking the legal mechanisms that would make the prohibition on genocide binding on itself — tells you that it understands international law as only applicable on others.
This is Part 4 of a series on the 2026 Palestinian draft constitution. Part 1 examined how the constitution makes peace illegal. Part 2 analyzed "pay for slay" under the constitution, Part 3 explored how it deals with armed groups.
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