Despite a Supreme Court ruling, Israel has spent more than two years refusing prison visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross – and continues to manoeuvre politically to keep it that way.

Israeli authorities have barred delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from accessing prisons since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israeli territory, in a breach of their international obligations. From Geneva, the ICRC insists that such visits remain one of its priorities for the region.

Alarming reports have emerged from behind prison walls. Several months ago, an official Israeli body, the Public Defence Office, delivered a damning verdict, concluding that Israeli prisons were “unfit to hold human beings in detention”, and that prisoners were subjected to “gratuitous and unjustified violence”.

The Israeli parliament, the office of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister responsible for prisons, and the Israeli Supreme Court have all reviewed the policy. Still, it remains unchanged.

Inhumane treatment

Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organisations have corroborated the reports of inhumane conditions, including ill-treatment tantamount to torture. This has resulted in dozens of deaths in custody, according to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian organisation that monitors the detention conditions of Palestinians and released prisoners. An investigation by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also revealed the constant use of sexual violence against detainees in Israeli prisons.

Such brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners briefly made headlines in the western press last May, when Ben-Gvir offered a humiliating and violent welcome to members of an international flotilla detained as they tried to sail to Gaza, before quickly vanishing from the public eye.

Yet the debate over the ban on ICRC prison visits continues. In June, in a more than 60-page-long judgement, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the refusal to admit the ICRC into prisons violated both international and Israeli law.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which petitioned the court, it is the first time in 50 years that Israel has blocked ICRC visits to this extent. The judges found that the Israeli government had failed to provide a legal basis to justify the suspension. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which establishes the obligation to allow such visits, foresees exceptions only on grounds of “compelling military necessity” and only “as an exceptional and temporary measure”.

Israel has offered a shifting series of justifications, alternating between security concerns and, in a tit-for-tat logic, refusing the ICRC access for as long as Israeli hostages remained in Hamas’s hands. But all the hostages held in Gaza have since been freed and returned to Israel, as well as the remains of those who were killed. Still, the prison doors remain shut to outside scrutiny.

Parliamentarians strike back

Far from being persuaded by the Supreme Court, right-wing and far-right members of parliament have even tried to go further. In late June, they tried to push a bill that would have outright banned the visits. The prospect of an ICRC visit “caused panic within the prison service”, said right-wing Likud lawmaker Galit Distel-Atbaryan, warning of a “public relations disaster for the entire state of Israel” should conditions of detention be exposed. “Do not allow these visits under any circumstances,” she urged her colleagues.

In the end, the vote failed 36 to 42, torpedoed by internal political wrangling among the ultra-Orthodox parties over an entirely unrelated matter.

Following this setback, the prison service, under Ben-Gvir’s control, issued its own guidelines allowing ICRC visits to resume – but on narrow terms: just one visit every three months, a maximum of five prisoners seen individually, separated by a partition and in the presence of guards, with no possibility of medical follow-up. Even under far less restrictive conditions in the past, the ICRC has consistently refused to operate on such terms.

’Being informed of the fate of all detainees’

Although bound by confidentiality over the content of its discussions with detainees, the ICRC confirms it has had no access to the prisons since October 2023.

“We continue to stress the need to be informed of the fate and whereabouts of all detainees, and to be able to visit them,” says Fatima Sator, an ICRC spokesperson, noting that the organisation is in talks with the various Israeli authorities “on the terms for a resumption of our activities”.

This week, around a dozen western states called on Israel to change its policy on the detention of Palestinian prisoners, arguing that it was failing to meet its obligations under international law, including the Geneva Conventions. Switzerland’s foreign affairs department confirmed it had not joined the statement, saying it “prefers the bilateral pathway”, and noted that “political consultations” had taken place in Bern earlier in the week.

This article was originally published in French in Le Temps. It has been adapted and translated into English by Geneva Solutions. Articles from third-party websites are not licensed under Creative Commons and cannot be republished without the media’s consent.