Israel must allow ICRC to visit Palestinians in prison, Supreme Court rules

Key points

• Israel’s Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a government policy banning representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.
• The court ruled on Wednesday that by preventing the Red Cross from visiting prisoners, the government had contravened Israeli and international law, and therefore the policy must be repealed.
• It also ruled that the government failed to present a legal foundation for its policy on annulling all visits after the Hamas-led attack on October 2023, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and more than 240 were taken captive.
• The assault triggered a brutal war in Gaza, which has been defined as a genocide by several prominent scholars and an independent United Nations inquiry.
• The Israeli army killed more than 72,950 people in the enclave, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and reduced most of the besieged territory to rubble, and forced the...