Israel reduces food given to Palestinian prisoners to ‘starvation’ levels

The Israeli Prison Service has drastically reduced the amount of food it has been giving to Palestinian security prisoners since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

Dozens of Palestinian detainees have testified recently that the Israeli Prison Service has lessened their food rations to the point of starvation, saying that they had lost a significant amount of weight as a result.

None of the detainees are connected with Hamas and many have not yet been put on trial or are held in long-term "administrative detention" without trial.

On Wednesday, The New Arab’s affiliate Al-Araby TV shared footage of Ahmed Wahdan, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem who had been held in Israeli prisons for four years, looking emaciated and walking with difficulty upon his release.

In recent weeks, Israel has released some prisoners it detained during its ongoing brutal war on the Gaza Strip, many of whom appeared shocked, disturbed, and gaunt after regaining their freedom.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and other Israeli rights groups earlier this week filed a petition regarding the conditions in which Palestinian prisoners from Gaza were being held at the Sde Teiman detention centre in southern Israel and it was upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court.

This brought the issue of the reduction of food to Palestinian prisoners into the spotlight, with limiting of food being criticised as "unacceptable" by the Supreme Court.

In response to the petition, Israel’s extreme-right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir defended the reduction as a "deterrent measure", Haaretz reported.

Last month, Eran Nahon, a legal advisor to the Israeli Prison Service boasted of the reductions at a meeting of the Israeli bar association.

"They will receive the absolute minimum required by law and by the conventions to which Israel is committed," Nahon said, according to Haaretz. "Not a gram more," he added.