A ruling not enforced

On May 8, 2026, Israel’s government told the High Court it would let the Red Cross visit the prisons where Palestinian “security” prisoners are held, but not meet the prisoners. The offer came on the instructions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz reported, and the visits were to be limited to meetings with prison staff and tours of the prisons.

It ruled that in imposing this policy the government contravened Israeli and international law.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the four groups that brought the petition, on the court’s unanimous ruling of June 3, 2026

The visits on offer were to five facilities that hold “security” prisoners, according to the Hebrew news site Ha-Makom, and only “to get an impression of the conditions of incarceration,” “without personal meetings with the detainees, for security reasons.”

The court rejected the offer. Justice Barak-Erez wrote that a visit without direct contact with the prisoners is “not a visit at all.” In Ha-Makom’s account, that holds under Israeli law and under international law alike.

The case sat before Israel’s High Court for more than two years. In that time, according to Ha-Makom’s account of the ruling, the government filed repeated requests for more time: about 25 requests to postpone its responses and the hearings.

The court issued a conditional order in the case in August 2024, Ha-Makom reports. The hearing was held only on Oct. 29, 2025, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. On that same day, Defense Minister Israel Katz signed an order barring Red Cross delegates from visiting detainees classified as “unlawful combatants.”

B’Tselem took his testimony on Oct. 31, 2025, and published it in its report “Living Hell” in January 2026.

The rules followed a vote in the Knesset. On the evening of June 29, 2026, lawmakers rejected at first reading a bill to bar Red Cross delegates from entering prisons and detention facilities, 41-36, while the ultra-Orthodox parties boycotted the vote, Haaretz reported. The bill, sponsored by Knesset members Galit Distel Atbaryan, Katy Shitrit and others, was meant to stop the delegates from visiting “security” prisoners or receiving information about them.

Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi then set new rules making it harder for the Red Cross to visit “security” prisoners held in Prison Service and army facilities, Haaretz reported on July 12. The rules run for six months and allow only limited, rationed visits, screened in advance and subject to prior approval and an intelligence check. Haaretz wrote that the rules run counter to the High Court’s ruling, and that the step was taken without consulting Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.

The rules permit the Red Cross “to visit just 20 prisoners per year at every detention facility,” The Times of Israel reported. That works out to four visits a year, with five prisoners at each.

On Sept. 9, 2026, an ICRC team “held a technical meeting, assessment and tour of a military detention facility in Israel,” the committee said in a statement. The statement’s title says the team met the authorities at the facility “as part of efforts to reinstate access.”

We haven’t had access to prisoners or detainees in Israel since October 7.

The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, to The National, Sept. 25, 2026

On Sept. 17, 2026, nearly four months after the ruling, four human rights groups led by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel asked Israel’s High Court to enforce it. They asked the court to order Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi to resume the visits in line with international law, in the form they took before they were stopped on Oct. 7, 2023, Haaretz reported.

The operative meaning of the ruling is that the respondents [the state authorities named in the petition] are obligated to allow Red Cross visits to the detention facilities with due speed. More than three months have passed since the ruling.

Justices Yitzhak Amit, Noam Sohlberg and Daphne Barak-Erez, in Israel’s High Court decision of Sept. 27, 2026

On Sept. 27, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit, Deputy President Noam Sohlberg and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez found that the government was not complying with the ruling. Their decision answered the four groups’ request, which argued that the failure to comply was contempt of court. The justices told the government to clarify by Oct. 11 whether “all the necessary preparations have been completed,” in the words of The Times of Israel, and to update the court on any steps decided or already carried out.