Israel’s Supreme Court says government is not giving Palestinian prisoners enough food

TEL AVIV — Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday ruled that the government has failed to provide Palestinian security prisoners with adequate food for basic subsistence and ordered authorities to improve their nutrition.

The 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 whom it suspects of links to the militant group 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 healthcare, 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 probably the main cause of death.

Sunday’s ruling came in response to a petition brought last year by the Assn. for Civil Rights in Israel, or 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, 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 Sunday’s ruling, the panel of three justices ruled unanimously that the state is legally obligated to provide prisoners with enough food to ensure “a basic level of existence.”

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.”

Melzer writes for the Associated Press.