High Court: State failing to adequately feed Palestinian security prisoners

The High Court of Justice rules two to one that the state is not fulfilling its legal obligations to adequately feed Palestinian security prisoners in custody in Israeli prisons and detention centers, and that it must take steps to provide such prisoners with enough food “to enable a basic existence.”

The petitions were filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Gisha organizations in April last year against National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and the Israel Prison Service, whom they accused of deliberately reducing prisoner rations below the level of subsistence and essentially starving Palestinian security prisoners.

Judges Daphne Barak Erez, Ofer Grosskopf, and David Mintz rule unanimously that the Israel Prison Service is legally obligated to provide prisoners with food to ensure a “basic level of existence.” Mintz disagrees, however, with Barak-Erez and Grosskopf’s opinion that the state is not fulfilling those legal obligations.

Writing for the majority, Barak-Erez determines that the legal level of nutrition has not been maintained for Palestinian prisoners, and that steps must be taken to rectify the situation.

“It must be remembered that the painful testimonies of freed [Israeli] hostages show that a stricter food regime [for Palestinian prisoners] does not improve the suffering of our kidnapped brothers who are still in trouble and captivity, and even the opposite,” notes Barak Erez.

And Grosskopf writes that the state has not sufficiently demonstrated it is implementing its obligations for nutrition.

Mintz dissents, maintaining that the state is ensuring a basic and legally acceptable level of nutrition for the prisoners, in terms of the approved menu and the provision of food itself in the prisons.

“The High Court of Justice ordered a halt to Ben Gvir’s policy of starving security prisoners,” says Oded Feller, an attorney for ACRI, adding that “a state does not starve people,” regardless of what they have done.

“The policy, which lasted for nearly two years, turned prisons in Israel into torture camps, and according to testimonies from hostages, also led to increased abuse of them.”