‘Basic conditions of survival’: Israeli Supreme Court rules govt failing to provide Palestinian prisoners enough food | World News

In a rare decision, Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday ruled that the government has not been providing Palestinian detainees with adequate food for survival and ordered authorities to improve both the quantity and quality of meals in prisons.
The three-judge panel unanimously held that the state is legally bound to provide at least three meals a day to guarantee what it called a “basic level of exence”, according to the Associated Press (AP). The court stressed that its ruling was not about “comfortable living or luxury”, but about “basic conditions of survival as required law”.
The ruling came in response to a petition filed the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and the Israeli rights group Gisha. The organisations argued that a food policy change enacted after the war began in Gaza had left Palestinian inmates malnourished and in some cases starving.
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Thousands of Palestinians have been detained in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since the war started nearly two years ago, many held without charge. Detainees and rights groups have described harsh prison conditions, including overcrowding, insufficient food, lack of medical care, and disease outbreaks.
Miner lashes out at ruling
ACRI welcomed the verdict and urged Israeli authorities to act without delay. In a statement on X, the rights group accused Israel’s prison service of having “turned Israeli prisons into torture camps”.
“A state must not starve people,” ACRI wrote. “People must not starve people — no matter what they have done.”
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On the other hand, National Security Miner Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees Israel’s prison system, sharply criticised the decision. He argued that while Israeli hostages in Gaza have no one to help them, the court was siding with Hamas “to our disgrace”.
Ben-Gvir, who heads a far-right ultranational party, has previously boasted that he reduced the conditions of Palestinian prisoners to what he called the bare minimum allowed Israeli law. Following Sunday’s ruling, he vowed the policy would continue unchanged.
(With inputs from AP)