AI-Summary – News For Tomorrow
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the government failed to provide adequate food to Palestinian security prisoners, violating basic subsistence standards. The decision, a rare rebuke amid the ongoing war, follows reports of widespread prison abuse, including malnutrition, poor sanitation, and beatings. Rights groups, like ACRI and Gisha, petitioned the court, citing a post-war food policy change leading to prisoner starvation. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees prisons, previously boasted of minimizing prisoners’ conditions. While the court ordered improved food provisions, Ben-Gvir criticized the ruling, stating minimal conditions would continue. ACRI condemned the prison system as “torture camps” and demanded immediate implementation of the court’s decision.
News summary provided by Gemini AI.
Israel’s supreme court has ruled that the government has failed to provide Palestinian security prisoners with adequate food for basic subsistence and ordered authorities to improve their nutrition.
Sunday’s decision was a rare case in which the country’s highest court ruled against the government’s conduct during the nearly two-year war.
Since the war began, Israel has seized thousands of people in Gaza that it suspects of having links to Hamas. Thousands have also been released without charge, often after months of detention.
Rights groups have documented widespread abuse in prisons and detention facilities, including insufficient food and health care, as well as poor sanitary conditions and beatings. In March, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy died at an Israeli prison and doctors said starvation was likely the main cause of death.
The ruling came in response to a petition brought last year by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and the Israeli rights group Gisha. The groups alleged that a change in the food policy enacted after the war in Gaza began has caused prisoners to suffer malnutrition and starvation.
Last year, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prison system, boasted that he had reduced the conditions of security prisoners to what he described as the bare minimum required by Israeli law.
In the 2-1 ruling, the justices said they found “indications that the current food supply to prisoners does not sufficiently guarantee compliance with the legal standard”. They said they had found “real doubts” that prisoners were eating properly, and ordered the prison service to “take steps to ensure the supply of food that allows for basic subsistence conditions in accordance with the law”.
Ben-Gvir, who leads a small far-right ultranationalist party, lashed out at the ruling, saying that while Israeli hostages in Gaza have no one to help them, Israel’s supreme court “to our disgrace” is defending Hamas militants. He said the policy of providing prisoners with “the most minimal conditions stipulated by the law” would continue unchanged.
ACRI called for the verdict to be implemented immediately. In a post on X, it said the prison service has “turned Israeli prisons into torture camps”.
“A state does not starve people,” it said. “People do not starve people – no matter what they have done.”
