While the High Court of Justice on Sunday struck down the government’s faction-based framework for Knesset member visits to security prisoners, ruling that the arrangement unlawfully undercut parliamentary oversight, it also unanimously rejected Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi’s individual request to meet imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti.
In a split outcome on the broader issue, Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez held that the so-called “factional outline” could not stand. Though Justice David Mintz agreed that the arrangement was deeply problematic, he would have stopped short of invalidating it, preferring to leave the matter to negotiations between the branches of government.
The court was unanimous, however, that Tibi was not entitled to the specific relief he sought at this stage, after security officials examined his request on its merits and opposed the meeting under the circumstances that existed when the petition was filed.
The petition challenged a policy adopted after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took office in December 2022 and canceled an arrangement reached earlier in 2022 between then-Knesset speaker Mickey Levy and then-public security minister Omer Bar-Lev.
In the previous framework, any Knesset member could, in principle, seek to visit a security prisoner, subject to case-by-case approval and security restrictions.
Ben-Gvir had instead revived a narrower model under which only one representative from each faction could request a meeting with a specific security prisoner; however, all MKs could still request general visits to prison facilities.
All three justices agreed that the factional model posed serious constitutional and practical difficulties.
The court said that the arrangement effectively denied most lawmakers the ability to carry out parliamentary oversight of prison conditions, improperly tying that oversight to factional affiliation rather than each MK’s independent status, and creating an arbitrary link between the number of factions in the Knesset and the scope of oversight.
The justices also pointed to evidence that the framework was open to manipulation, such as by switching faction representatives for particular visits.
The ruling also took aim at how the policy was implemented in practice.
Mintz wrote that Tibi appeared to have been treated unequally compared with other lawmakers, after his repeated requests over many months went unanswered, while other MKs’ requests were sometimes handled the same day or within days.
The opinion recounted a long chain of unanswered appeals by Tibi and interventions by the Knesset’s legal adviser, first regarding a request to visit the late prisoner Walid Daqqa and later regarding Barghouti.
Even so, the court said the up-to-date classified security material supported the refusal of the Barghouti visit. In parallel, it stressed that authorities must respond to any future request from Tibi promptly and efficiently.
Unrestricted right of MK access to prisons
On the legal question, the court did not recognize an unrestricted right of MK access to prisons. Mintz wrote that MKs cannot simply walk into prisons by virtue of their office. Because prisons are not treated as open-access spaces under the immunity law, the state can set rules and restrictions on visits.
But Mintz, too, found it difficult to ignore the flaws in the factional framework. Barak-Erez went further, saying that the defects required an operative remedy rather than yet more waiting for interbranch dialogue that had gone nowhere for years. Amit joined her on that point, writing that, after three years without meaningful progress, the time had come for a judicial ruling.
Attorney Myssana Morany of Adalah, the Palestinian-run legal center, who filed the petition on Tibi’s behalf, said in response that since taking office, Ben-Gvir had acted “to unlawfully and inhumanely violate the fundamental rights of Palestinian security prisoners.”
Preventing Arab MKs from visiting security prisons, she said, was another part of that policy, aimed at blocking oversight of the conditions in which Palestinian prisoners were held, while also harming the rights of Arab lawmakers and discriminating against them.
The ruling makes clear that the government must allow all MKs to carry out parliamentary oversight of conditions in security prisons, and sets “clear limits” on its authority to infringe the rights of Arab lawmakers and discriminate against them, Morany added.
She said such visits were especially important now, given what she described as the near-total isolation of Palestinian prisoners from the outside world and against the backdrop of severe testimony alleging torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment.
The bottom line was a dual result: Tibi did not get permission to meet Barghouti, but the broader visitation regime he challenged was struck down by a majority of the court.
In its summary of the ruling, the judiciary said the framework’s application had been marked by inconsistency and discrimination, and that the majority found the continued hope for a negotiated solution no longer justified, leaving the issue unresolved.