This marks a rare instance in which the court challenged the government's conduct
The Supreme Court in Israel has sided with Palestinian prisoners in a claim that they were being deprived of adequate nutrition while incarcerated, reported the Associated Press.
The judgment released on Sunday September 7 marks a rare instance in which the court challenged the government’s conduct since the Gaza war began In October 2023, according to AP News. Over the course of the conflict, the Israeli government had detained thousands of Palestinians in Gaza on suspicion of their links to the militant group Hamas.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Israeli rights organization Gisha first raised the mistreatment issue last year, claiming that a food policy change resulted in prisoners’ malnutrition. Interviews conducted in March with current and former detainees in camps highlighted the lack of adequate food and healthcare, poor sanitary conditions, and beatings carried out by the military. Palestinian teenager Walid Ahmad died while in Megiddo Prison that month, and an autopsy revealed that starvation was a likely factor in his death.
A three-justice panel on the Supreme Court declared that Israel had a legal obligation to provide prisoners enough food to facilitate “a basic level of existence” after finding that “the current food supply to prisoners does not sufficiently guarantee compliance with the legal standard,” per a statement published by AP News. The justices issued an order for the prison service to “take steps to ensure the supply of food that allows for basic subsistence conditions in accordance with the law.”
ACRI urged the immediate implementation of the court’s order. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who manages Israel’s prison system, condemned the court’s decision as a defense of Hamas militants. He claimed last year that he limited security prisoners’ conditions to what he said was the bare minimum under law, and declared that the current policy would be maintained.
