Insisting on Prisoners’ Right to Food

Last week, NIF grantee the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) won a temporary injunction at a hearing that will require the government to provide answers about its prison food policies, which have resulted in malnutrition for many Palestinian prisoners.

Following October 7, Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir implemented a “food reduction policy” within the Israeli prison system, insisting that they would receive the “minimum” amount of food. In practice, it has meant that the prison service has withheld adequate nutrition for Palestinian security detainees. ACRI has said that prisoners have shed an extraordinary amount of weight under the policy—up to 40 kg—a loss which amounts to evidence of starvation. In one testimony, a diabetic prisoner described eating toothpaste to raise his blood sugar. 

ACRI filed a petition challenging the legality of this policy under both international and Israeli law, both of which prohibit starving prisoners, regardless of the crimes they’ve committed. Ben Gvir himself showed up to the hearing, where he announced that he found the notion of even discussing prisoners’ rights absurd. He called the hearing “madness and delusion” and said that he was there “to ensure that the ‘terrorists’ receive the minimum of the minimum (in food).” 

Ben Gvir has argued that advocating for the rights of Palestinian prisoners—a small percentage of whom have been associated with Hamas’s elite Nukba force—amounts to support for Hamas and has accused the lawyers pushing Israel to align with international human rights standards of being “the enemy from within.”

In bringing legal action, ACRI is forcing the government to explain this policy in rational, legalistic terms, without resorting to caprice and animus. The State will now be required to provide a legal basis for denying the prisoners adequate nutrition by August 6. 

“Even in times of crisis, Israel must uphold international law and its own standards,” ACRI wrote, adding that the organization “remains committed to defending prisoners’ rights and holding Israeli authorities accountable for any violations.” 

The legal case is only the most recent of ACRI’s sustained efforts to ensure that all people—prisoners included—are treated with humanity, as the law requires. Their efforts have included advocating to reinstate the Red Cross, which is able to maintain neutrality in a way that Israeli officials are not, as the body responsible for monitoring prison conditions, and the closure of the infamous Sde Teiman Detention Center, where Palestinian prisoners were subjected to horrific abuses by Israeli prison guards. 

ACRI, with NIF’s support, will continue to stand up for the rights of prisoners, even, and especially, when it is unpopular or dangerous.