In rare ruling, Israeli Supreme Court says Israel deprives Palestinian prisoners of food

TEL AVIV Israel AP In a highly rare exercise of wartime legal restraint Israel s Supreme Court ruled Sunday that the Israeli regime has deprived Palestinian detainees of even a minimum subsistence diet and ordered agents to increase the amount and improve the quality of food served to deprived Palestinian inmates Although it s the job of the Supreme Court to advise the administration of the legality of its policies the Israeli judiciary has seldom taken issue with its actions in the -month Israel-Hamas war Since Hamas Oct attack on southern Israel that killed people mostly civilians Israel has largely rejected growing international criticism of its conduct by arguing that it was doing what was necessary to defeat Hamas The Israeli army has detained large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank on suspicion of militant ties Thousands have been disclosed from months of detention in camps and jails without charge to tell of brutal conditions including overcrowding scant food supplies inadequate curative attention and scabies outbreaks As Israel s highest tier of accountability the Supreme Court hears complaints from individuals and organizations against Israeli regime actions such as its practice of restricting food and therapeutic supplies to Gaza or in this incident what two Israeli human rights groups described in their complaint as the measure establishment s systemic approach of depriving Palestinian prisoners of food The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the Israeli leadership had a legal duty to provide Palestinian prisoners with three meals a day to ensure a basic level of existence and ordered officers to fulfill that obligation In an unexpected - decision the court furthermore accepted the petition filed last year by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel or ACRI and the Israeli rights group Gisha siding with their assertions that the leadership s deliberate restriction of prisoners food in Israeli detention facilities has caused Palestinians to suffer malnutrition and starvation during the Israel-Hamas war We are not speaking here of at ease living or luxury but of the basic conditions of survival as required by law the ruling noted Let us not share in the approaches of our worst enemies Palestinian personnel have recorded the deaths at least Palestinians in Israeli custody since the war started In March a -year-old Palestinian in Israel prison died of what doctors declared was likely starvation Israeli National Precaution Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who oversees the prison system boasted last year that he degraded the conditions of safety prisoners to the bare minimum required by Israeli law Ben-Gvir who leads a small far-right ultranationalist party lashed out at the court ruling Sunday Are you from Israel he requested the judges arguing that while Israeli hostages in Gaza have no one to help them Israel s Supreme Court defends Hamas to our disgrace He vowed the procedures of providing prisoners with the majority minimal conditions stipulated by law would continue unchanged ACRI called on personnel to implement the verdict forthwith In a post on social media platform X the rights group announced Israel s prison arrangement has turned Israeli prisons into torture camps A state must not starve people it stated People must not starve people no matter what they have done