The Supreme Court of Israel claims that the government did not feed enough Palestinian prisoners

The decision was a rare case in which the highest courtyard of the country ruled against the conduct of the government during the war of almost two years.

Since the start of the war, Israel has grasped thousands of people in Gaza that it has suspected links with Hamas. Thousands have also been released without indictment, often after months of detention.

Rights defense groups have documented generalized abuses in prisons and detention establishments, including insufficient food and health care, as well as poor health conditions and blows.

Sunday’s decision came in response to a petition presented last year by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and the Israeli rights group Gisha.

The groups allegedly alleged that a change in food policy promulgated after the war in Gaza made prisoners suffer from malnutrition and famine.

Last year, the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the penitentiary system, said that he had reduced the conditions of security detainees to what he described as the strict minimum required by Israeli law.

In Sunday’s decision, the panel of three judges unanimously judged that the State is legally obliged to provide prisoners with sufficient food to ensure “a basic level of existence”.

In decision 2-1, the judges said they had noted “indications that the current food supply to prisoners does not sufficiently guarantee compliance with the legal standard”.

They said they had found “real doubts” that the prisoners ate properly and ordered the prison service to “take measures to provide food provision which allows basic subsistence conditions in accordance with the law”.

Mr. Ben-Gvir, who directs a small ultra-nationalist party from the far right, criticized the decision, saying that even if the Israeli hostages in Gaza have no one to help them, the Supreme Court of Israel “to our shame” defends Hamas activists.

He said the policy of providing prisoners “the minimal conditions stipulated by law” would continue unchanged.

ACI called for the implementation of the verdict immediately. In an article on X, he said that the penitentiary service had “transformed Israeli prisons into torture camps”.

“A state is not hungry for people,” he said. “People are not hungry people – whatever they have done.”