Israel’s Supreme Court demands adequate food for Palestinian prisoners

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that the government is not providing sufficient food to Palestinian prisoners and ordered an improvement in both the quantity and quality of meals in prisons—an “extremely rare display of judicial restraint in wartime,” according to the Associated Press.

Thousands of Palestinians detained in prisons and camps without charges—merely on suspicion of military activity in Gaza and the West Bank—describe “barbaric” conditions of confinement, including overcrowding, inadequate food supplies, insufficient medical care, and scabies outbreaks. Officially, at least 61 Palestinian prisoner deaths have been recorded in the past two years, while at least one detainee, a 17-year-old, is reported to have died from starvation. As Israel’s highest accountability body, the Supreme Court reviews complaints from individuals and organizations against government actions, though in the past 23 months it has done so only rarely. Nevertheless, it unanimously ruled that the Israeli government has a legal obligation to provide Palestinian prisoners with three meals a day to ensure “a basic standard of living.”

Although the Court is tasked with overseeing the legality of government policies, it has exercised this role only sparingly over the last 23 months.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prison system, stated that detention conditions would remain unchanged, having previously declared last year that he had downgraded them to the bare minimum required under Israeli law.

Meanwhile, this morning two gunmen opened fire at a bus stop in East Jerusalem, killing six and seriously injuring seven people. The attackers, who were also killed, are reportedly two Palestinians from the West Bank, with IDF soldiers searching for suspects in areas around Ramallah. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, though Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised it, with Hamas calling it a “natural response” to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement condemning “any attack against Palestinian and Israeli civilians.”