The attack on two IDF bases by far-right mobs in support of soldiers who allegedly sexually tortured detainees was not a sudden development, and the parallels with the 2016 incident were quickly apparent.
In March of that year, Israel Defense Forces soldier Elor Azaria was serving in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron when he calmly walked up to a wounded Palestinian knife attacker, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, as he lay on the ground and shot him in the head. The video of the killing, released by human rights groups, sparked a political furor.
Many politicians, including Israel Defense Forces commanders and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned Azaria’s actions, saying they violated the military’s ethics code and should be prosecuted. But the reaction from the right was swift and fierce. Polls showed more than half of Israelis supported Azaria, and protests were held in his defense.
The Israeli political and military establishment has denied or tolerated repeated allegations of torture at Sde Teyman.
Netanyahu appeared to listen to his supporters and change his tune, criticizing the generals who investigated Azaria and ultimately joining calls for a pardon for the soldier, who was released to hero’s honour in 2018 after serving nine months of a 14-month sentence for manslaughter.
Retaliatory riots by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian town of Huwara last February were another horrific incident, as were well-documented war crimes by IDF soldiers in the Gaza Strip, including looting food and burning homes.
But until this week, government ministers had refrained from violence. On Monday, Israeli military police raided Sde Teyman, an IDF base in the Negev desert that has become a notorious Guantanamo-style Palestinian detention center since the start of the Gaza war, and arrested nine soldiers on suspicion of severe torture and sexual abuse of prisoners.
The detainee, a member of Hamas’ elite Nuqba unit that carried out the October 7 attack, was admitted to hospital earlier this month and underwent surgery. The hospital is believed to have launched an investigation, following procedures for victims of sexual assault.
After news of the arrests spread, a startling insight into the political currents rocking Israeli society followed. About 200 right-wing demonstrators, including Knesset members and several government ministers, entered the base to protest the arrests, and only dispersed hours after reports of the use of tear gas emerged.
Fresh clashes then broke out between military police and soldiers, who built barricades in solidarity with their arrested colleagues, Israeli media reported, and there were clashes with around 300 protesters at a military police base in central Israel, where demonstrators attacked journalists.
Left-leaning Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz He said Monday’s events were evidence of “the serious moral decadence that has accompanied the loosening of rules and restrictions over the years of occupation.”
While allegations of mistreatment of Palestinians held in mass detention in the Gaza Strip and at Sde Teyman are widespread, Monday’s arrests do not signal a new sense of responsibility by the state of Israel towards Palestinian prisoners.
The government says it plans to transfer Palestinian detainees elsewhere, but for now the base continues to be used as a detention center.
Conditions for Palestinians held in regular Israeli prisons are not much better, and since October 7 Israel has violated international law by refusing to allow Red Cross inspectors to visit detention facilities.
Investigation underway into alleged abuses of Palestinians by IDF Extremely rare Prosecutions are even rarer, and the only reason an investigation into this case appears to have been opened was because hospital personnel who treated the victim off-base raised the alarm.
Instead, violent violence seems increasingly normalized in the latest bloody episode in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sparked by a Hamas attack on October 7. A recent UN report estimated that 27 detainees have died in the custody of Israeli military bases since the war began, and at least four have died in the Israeli prison system due to beatings or denial of medical treatment.
Both the Israeli political and military establishments have denied or condoned the repeated allegations of torture at Sde Teyman, encouraging the brutal treatment of prisoners and reinforcing a culture of impunity.
A key principle of international law is complementarity, which prevents the International Court of Justice in The Hague from pursuing war crimes prosecutions that are the subject of credible state-level investigations or criminal proceedings. In an effort to determine whether Israel is able or willing to investigate itself, prosecutors in The Hague will have their eye on Monday’s dramatic events.
Israel’s enemies will also be keeping a close eye on what they see as internal discord and weakness. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Tuesday that the attacks were damaging national security and that three combat battalions that had been scheduled for deployment in Gaza had been diverted to Beit Lid.
Monday’s riots at a military base to defend soldiers accused of horrific crimes were not the first recent sign of the Israeli right’s weakening respect for human dignity and the rule of law, and it is unlikely to be the last.
