JERUSALEM, Aug. 3 -- A Jerusalem District Court has ruled that Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir cannot use crocodiles to guard Palestinian security detainees at Ketziot Prison, a facility in the Negev desert with a documented history of international criticism for conditions that human rights organizations have described as falling below the standards required by international humanitarian law. The ruling came on a petition filed by Let the Animals Live, an Israeli animal rights organization. The animals in question were what prompted the legal challenge. The human beings who would have faced them were not the petitioners.

Ben-Gvir, who oversees Israel's prison authority as the coalition government's national security ...