The Supreme Court of Israel annulled this Wednesday the order issued by the Government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the attacks by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in October 2023, which prohibited the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
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The 15 members of the body supported this ruling, which states that the order is not supported by Israeli legislation nor International Law and considers that the Executive did not present legal grounds to deny the ICRC visits despite the “countless opportunities” the court gave it to do so, according to the newspaper The Times of Israel.
The Supreme Court also recalled in its ruling that the last hostages remaining in the Gaza Strip were released in October of last year, after the Government of Israel argued, among other reasons to prohibit the Committee’s visits to Palestinian prisoners, that the people kidnapped by the militia also did not have access to the entity’s staff.
Therefore, the court established that Israeli authorities must allow visits by ICRC representatives to Palestinian prisoners and inform them about their situation, although it did not specify a deadline for this.
The president of the Supreme Court, Isaac Amit; the vice president, Noam Sholberg, and Judge Daphne Barak Erez, the three highest-ranking magistrates of the court, made the decision public.
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In the document, Erez pointed out that, given the current circumstances, the court does not need to address what she called a “dilemma,” alluding to the fact that it was “difficult to accept” the situation experienced by the hostages while some prisoners requested access to the ICRC, although she clarified that “the obligations arising from International Law remain regardless of reciprocity”.
The organizations that appealed the Government’s order, led by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), regretted “that the process has taken so long”, although they expressed hope that “the return of the Red Cross to the prisons will finally put an end to the abusive policies of the Prison Service.”
“The situation in prisons and military detention centers is dreadful. Since the beginning of the war, horrific testimonies have been received about the abuse, violence, and starvation suffered by Palestinian prisoners, without exception”, said Oded Feller, ACRI lawyer.
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