Far-right in an uproar after Israel detains military reservists over Gaza detainee abuse

JERUSALEM - Chaos broke out at an Israeli military base holding Palestinian detainees Monday, as far-right demonstrators rallied after nine reservists were detained in connection to allegations of “serious abuse of a detainee.”

The detentions of the reservists who were serving at the prison followed months of international pressure and domestic legal scrutiny over conditions inside Sde Teiman, a facility on a military base in the Negev desert that holds Palestinian detainees captured in Gaza.

Videos on social media Monday showed a crowd rattling the base’s metal gates, and then running inside behind a member of the country’s parliament.

“That is Zvi Sukkot,” shouted one of the protesters, before the far-right lawmaker slipped through the gate. Online, political allies, including those in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, quickly seized on the moment.

“I’m calling on the chief military prosecutor, get your hands off the reservists,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, wrote on X. “Take your hands off the reservists,” posted Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who oversees the prison system.

Netanyahu condemned the break-in and called for calm. The army’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, described the incident as “extremely serious and against the law.”

“We are in the midst of a war, and actions of this type endanger the security of the state,” he said in a statement. “We are working to restore order at the base.”

The abuse of Palestinian prisoners has accelerated sharply across the penal system since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, according to rights groups, lawyers and former detainees, who say that torture, sexual abuse and deprivation of food have become commonplace.

The Israeli army said the nine suspects were detained “for questioning on suspicion of serious abuse of a detainee.”

Military detention camps like Sde Teiman have served as an initial holding point for Palestinians detained in Gaza. After weeks, sometimes months, in detention, those who are later alleged to have militant links are typically transferred into the Israeli prison system; others are released without charge, often after weeks of abuse and interrogation, according to the testimony of former detainees.

Palestinian detainees newly released from Sde Teiman describe being beaten, denied medical care and made to kneel handcuffed and blindfolded for days. In May, a CNN investigation found the camp was divided into two parts: enclosed areas housing groups of shackled detainees — some handcuffed so tightly they had to have body parts surgically removed — and a field hospital, where patients in blindfolds and diapers were strapped to beds and force-fed through straws.

In June, Khaled Mahajna, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, was the first lawyer granted access to a detainee in Sde Teiman. He told the Al Araby news outlet that he heard reports of detainees being raped and tortured.

Naji Abbas, director of the prisoners and detainees department for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said his organization had interviewed former Sde Teiman detainees who reported cases of others being raped and sexually assaulted there, as well as in Israeli prison facilities.

On Monday, rights groups welcomed the detention of the soldiers from Sde Teiman but warned that a single investigation did not go far enough.

“While it is crucial to investigate and hold the guards accountable, this probe does not address the widespread torture, described in countless testimonies that have accumulated over the past several months,” said Ari Remez, a spokesman for the Adalah legal rights group.

The opposition to the military’s investigation from elected officials on Monday reflected “a deep culture of impunity in Israel, rooted in years of Israeli authorities and courts shielding perpetrators of severe violence against Palestinians,” he said.

The Israeli government offered its first public accounting of the previously secret detentions in May, saying that authorities had detained about 4,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the war began, and released 1,500 of them for lack of evidence.

Israel’s far-reaching Unlawful Combatants Law permits a form of administrative detention, or incarceration without trial. Under the 2002 law, Palestinians from Gaza can be jailed up to 45 days without a detention order, and can be held up to 75 days without seeing a judge and up to six months without legal consul. They are not classified as prisoners of war.

Rights groups say the law has created a black hole ripe for the abuse and torture of Gazan detainees disappearing into military custody.

After months of mounting international scrutiny and domestic legal challenges, in early June Israeli authorities announced they had begun transferring hundreds of Gazan detainees to other military-run facilities. The development came in response to a petition before Israel’s Supreme Court challenging the detention center’s legality and calling for its closure due to abuse and torture allegations.

“Egregious violations at Sde Teiman make depriving these people of liberty blatantly unconstitutional,” the Tel Aviv-based Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), among the five rights group petitioning, said in a statement at the time.

As of July 18, according to ACRI, the government had transferred more than 700 detainees out of Sde Teiman while around 40 Gazan detainees remained at the site. Palestinians from Gaza are now primarily held at other military detention sites, mainly Ofer and Anatot in the occupied West Bank and Ketziot in the southern Negev desert, as well as makeshift sites run by Israel’s intelligence agencies.

“The conditions at Sde Teiman gravely violate both Israeli and international law,” ACRI said in a statement last week. “Its continued operation is not just illegal — it’s a potential war crime. ... It’s illegal to hold any detainees there, whether it’s 10 or 100, for a week or six months.”

In another round of legal battles, rights groups have sought access to Gazan detainees and demanded the state account for the thousands of men who disappeared into the system and whose whereabouts have remained unknown for months. Israel has barred the International Red Cross from accessing any Palestinians in detention since Oct. 7.

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Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.