The High Court of Justice has postponed and canceled hearings on petitions dealing with the rights of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the legality of Israeli warfare there, on the grounds of the state of emergency that was declared due to the war with Iran.

In this context, Justice Minister Yariv Levin placed the country’s courts on emergency footing, instructing them to only handle urgent matters, such as hearings on criminal offenses related to the state of emergency and urgent petitions to the Supreme Court. It also includes detention hearings, including those on so-called administrative detention — detention without trials.

Human rights organizations warn that, in the wake of Levin’s directive and under the cover of the war, Israel is continuing to violate international law in Gaza while precluding legal recourse.

This situation adds to the conduct of the Supreme Court since the beginning of the war in Gaza; as recently reported in Haaretz, it has validated most of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

On Tuesday, a hearing was scheduled on a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, demanding that Palestinian security prisoners held in Israel be provided with adequate food. Many of these prisoners were detained during the war in Gaza. As early as April 2024, a petition was submitted concerning their feeding.

In December, the court issued a show-cause order to the state, instructing it to explain why it was not providing sufficient food to prisoners to meet their basic living standards. The court was presented with information indicating a significant decrease in the body weight of security prisoners and detainees.

The petition argued that a food reduction policy was in place that amounts to starvation and detention under torture-like conditions and violates Israeli and international law. In response, the state argued that the menu provided to security prisoners is based on professional standards and complies with the law.

On Sunday afternoon, the right-wing Movement for Governability and Democracy issued a statement condemning the slated hearing on the petition. “The High Court will deliberate on the incarceration conditions and diet of the members of the Nukhba unit (elite Hamas unit of whom many of the members participated in the October 7 attack),” they wrote.

“We checked again and again, and perhaps the Supreme Court will finally act responsibly in the war and the extreme emergency situation, but unfortunately, not, as of now, there is no change.” A few hours later, the court announced the cancellation of the hearing; it has not yet been rescheduled.

ACRI legal adviser Oded Feller, who represents the organization in the petition, says they waited a long time for the hearing. According to him, since the start of the war in Gaza, there have been repeated reports of severe incidents in Israeli facilities, including torture, violence, humiliation and even preventable deaths. He adds that ACRI has evidence of the starvation of thousands of security prisoners and drastic weight loss.

“There has never been a decision by the security cabinet to act this way, and the reason is solely [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist obsession,” he says.

Feller adds that the outgoing Shin Bet security service chief, Ronen Bar, also warned that the conduct in the prisons could be considered a crime under international law and a violation of the anti-torture convention. “He emphasized that there is no benefit to Ben-Gvir’s actions, which the Israel Prison Service cooperates with, only drawbacks.”

In a related matter, on Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron extended the state’s deadline for responding to petitions concerning humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. The petitions, filed by four human rights organizations, demand that Israel take effective measures to ensure humanitarian aid to the Palestinian population.

Elron’s decision followed a request from the State Prosecutor’s Office that, he said, cited the war with Iran and the state of emergency.

ACRI, Gisha, HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual and Physicians for Human Rights — Israel say the hearing and granting of the petition are urgent. The petition notes that dozens of Gazans have been killed and hundreds injured recently while trying to obtain food at aid distribution sites and states that all residents of the Gaza Strip are at risk of starvation.

In a rare move, in May, Elron instructed the state to indicate in its response to the petition if the “factual situation” in Gaza had changed so as to justify its denial. The petitioners argue, however, that “even if certain details change, the situation on the ground indicates a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip due to Israel’s policies, and the state, with the help of the Supreme Court, is evading the responsibility dictated by this.”

According to the petition, “Thousands of children in the [Gaza] Strip suffer from severe malnutrition and the number of deaths resulting from this has recently increased.” It further argues that “the vast majority of residents suffer from a lack of food and water and are struggling to survive” and that “the collapsing health care system is unable to attend to the hungry, the sick, the injured, children, pregnant women and new mothers.”

Osnat Cohen-Lifshitz, the director of Gisha’s legal department, says that particularly in wartime, “Ordinary people need the protection of the court against the state’s monstrous power.” She adds that “The courts, which even in peacetime are forgiving of the injustices committed by the state, as if they were the innocent pranks of kindergartners, find it appropriate to protect the state and not those who are harmed by its excessive power.” She calls on “the courts to fulfill their role, to examine and critique the state’s conduct tirelessly even now and compel it to comply with the rules of international and Israeli law.”

Also delayed by the emergency-footing order is a petition from three reservists: Or Szneiberg and Avshalom Zohar Sal, who are serving in Gaza, and Aviad Houminer-Rosenblum, who is serving on the northern border. They are asking the Supreme Court to issue an order instructing Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to cancel the determination that “concentration and movement of the population” in Gaza is one of the objectives of the operation.

In the petition, submitted through lawyers Michael Sfard, Einat Gayer and Snir Klein, they argue at length that this is an improper goal that explicitly contradicts international law. The petition was filed on May 29, and though three weeks have passed, no hearing has been scheduled yet, and the court has not instructed the defense minister and the IDF chief to respond to it.

An urgent motion filed this week by Sfard on behalf of the petitioners requests an urgent hearing and a directive ordering the state to submit a preliminary response. Sfard emphasizes in the motion that the petitioners are currently in reserve duty and fear the operation in which they are participating is based on a manifestly illegal order.

“To the best of the petitioners’ knowledge, at this moment, and with even greater intensity under the cover of the war in Iran, the Gazan population is being forcibly transferred to the southern [Gaza] Strip without any intention of allowing their return and with the aim of removing them to third countries,” Sfard writes. “If this is indeed the case, it constitutes egregious violations of international law and the commission of serious criminal offenses.”