Israeli court: Netanyahu regime deprives Palestinian abductees of basic food for survival

In a rare move, Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the regime has deprived Palestinian abductees of even the most basic nutritional requirements for survival.

This is while the regime’s Supreme Court, whose job is to review the cabinet’s actions for legality, has rarely opposed those actions during the ongoing 23-month of genocide in Gaza.

The Israeli military has abducted thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Many of them, held for months without charge, have been released and reported enduring brutal conditions, including severe overcrowding, food shortages, denial of medical care, and outbreaks of scabies.

The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet had a legal duty to provide Palestinian abductees with three meals a day to ensure “a basic level of existence” and ordered authorities to fulfill that obligation.

In a surprising 2-1 ruling, the court also upheld a petition from Israeli rights groups ACRI and Gisha, where the judges agreed with their claim that the Netanyahu cabinet’s intentional policy of limiting food for abductees has led to malnutrition and starvation among them during the genocide.

“We are not speaking here of comfortable living or luxury, but of the basic conditions of survival as required by law,” the ruling said.

Israel’s so-called national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of the Israeli prison system and leads a far-right ultranationalist party, strongly criticized the Supreme Court’s decision. He had previously stated that his policy was to reduce conditions for “security prisoners” to the absolute minimum permitted under law.

In his reaction to the ruling, he questioned the judges’ national loyalty. “Are you from Israel?” he asked the judges, arguing that while Israeli captives in Gaza have no one to help them, Israel’s Supreme Court defends Hamas “to our disgrace.”

Despite the court’s order, Ben-Gvir vowed to maintain his existing policy of granting abductees only the most basic conditions the law allows.

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Meanwhile, ACRI called on authorities to implement the verdict immediately. In a post on social media platform X, the rights group said Israel’s prison service has “turned Israeli prisons into torture camps.”

“A state must not starve people,” it said. “People must not starve people — no matter what they have done.”

Palestinian authorities report that at least 61 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since the genocide began, including a 17-year-old who doctors say likely died from starvation in March.

According to abductees’ rights organizations, Israel has detained approximately 18,500 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023. Some of the individuals have been released.

By early July, about 10,800 Palestinians were still incarcerated in Israeli prisons, comprising 49 women and 450 children, marking the highest figures since the Second Intifada in 2000.

As reported by the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, approximately 60 percent of Palestinian abductees held in Israeli jails are afflicted with chronic illnesses, with several of them having died either during their detention or following their release as a result of the severity of their conditions.

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