Red Cross to meet Israeli officials amid push to renew visits to Palestinian security prisoners

Talks this week at a detention facility aim at letting humanitarian group resume meeting inmates, which halted after Oct. 7; Ben Gvir pans High Court for ordering lifting of ban

By Nava Freiberg

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and Noam Lehmann 8 September 2026, 10:15 am

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Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are expected to meet Israeli security officials at a detention facility this week as part of ongoing efforts to resume its visits to Palestinian security prisoners and detainees, an ICRC spokesperson told The Times of Israel on Monday, following a Channel 12 report on the matter.

The spokesperson clarified that the meeting will not itself constitute a renewal of the visits, after Channel 12 reported that the ICRC is expected to begin visiting prisoners in Israeli jails this week for the first time since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.

“We are continuing our dialogue with the authorities, and hope that visits — which, by definition, include meetings with detainees — will resume,” the spokesperson said.

The Israel Prison Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the wake of reports that visits will resume, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir accused the High Court of Justice of harming the deterrence capability of Israel’s security forces when, earlier this year, it ruled that the government cannot prevent the visits.

“The High Court’s directive to allow visits to the Nukhba terrorists, for the first time since October 7, constitutes direct harm to the State of Israel’s security deterrent,” Ben Gvir wrote on X, referring to Hamas’s elite fighting force.

Hamas Nukhba Battalion terrorists captured during the October 7 massacre are seen in a jail cell at a prison in central Israel, where high-risk Hamas prisoners captured during the recent war are being held, February 17, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The far-right minister also referred to human rights groups as the “enemy,” and misrepresented a quote from Supreme Court President Isaac Amit to claim that the court is biased in their favor.

“Unfortunately, the High Court consistently serves as an address for the appeals of the enemy, and as Justice Amit said to petitioners on the issue of bringing goods into Gaza, ‘this court makes itself available to you,'” Ben Gvir wrote.

Amit had, on June 10, 2024, challenged petitioners demanding more aid for the Strip to specify how they would distribute aid more effectively than the IDF has. He said, “this court is available to you, makes itself available to you,” to hear those suggestions. The court ultimately rejected the petitions.

Ben Gvir further claimed that there are fewer terror attacks because he has championed the worsening of Palestinian security prisoners’ living conditions.

“The security reality is clear: a decrease of about 75% in terror attacks. And that, according to the Shin Bet, is, among other things, because of the reform in terrorists’ jail conditions,” Ben Gvir claimed.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, together with members of his Otzma Yehudit party, arrives to submit the party list to the Central Elections Committee ahead of the upcoming election, at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, September 7, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Shin Bet in January published an annual report for 2025 that indicated a roughly 77 percent decrease relative to 2024 in the number of “serious terror attacks” by Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The report did not mention the worsened jail conditions.

A similar report by the IDF cited a roughly 78% decrease from 2024 to 2025 in the number of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and Israel, but attributed that decrease to the military’s counterterror operations rather than the worsening of prisoners’ living conditions.

The same report also recorded a more than 50% spike in 2024 in severe attacks by settlers against Palestinians.

Israel’s High Court of Justice in June unanimously ruled to annul the government’s blanket policy prohibiting the ICRC from visiting Palestinian security prisoners and halting the sharing of information about them following October 7. The government had justified the ban in part by pointing to Hamas’s refusal to allow the Red Cross to visit Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

The justices did not specify when the visits had to resume.

According to Channel 12, the government has since made significant efforts to delay the implementation of that decision until after election next month, though those efforts appear to have failed.

Female Palestinian security prisoners seen in a video published August 30, 2026 by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who visited them at the Damon security prison in northern Israel. (Itamar Ben Gvir)

A series of reports issued by the Public Defender’s Office that were revealed in January found that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons suffer from severe and systematic violence from prison guards, deprivation of food and medical neglect, and unsanitary conditions that caused and exacerbated outbreaks of disease in the prisons.

The Israel Prison Service has denied allegations of systematic abuse, while Ben Gvir has repeatedly boasted of his minimalist policy on conditions for security prisoners since October 7.

Last month, he posted a video of himself telling female Palestinian security prisoners that they deserve only the most basic conditions. The video was later removed after an appeal by the Committee Against Torture organization to the Central Elections Committee, claiming the video constituted illegal use of state resources for election propaganda.

A spokesman for Ben Gvir did not immediately respond when asked whether the minister took down the video because of the organization’s appeal.