Dozens of Israeli protesters, including far-right members of the Knesset, have clashed with military police after at least nine soldiers suspected of abusing a Palestinian prisoner were detained for questioning from the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel.
The protesters waved Israeli flags and stormed through the facility’s gate on Monday to try to prevent the soldiers’ detention as they chanted “shame”. They defended the soldiers, saying they were doing their duty. Several Israeli civilians rushed to lend support to the soldiers, according to media reports.
Some unsuccessfully tried to break into the facility. One soldier was quoted as saying by the Haaretz newspaper that some members of the military directed pepper spray at the military police who came to detain the soldiers.
Demonstrators also tried to breach the Beit Lid military base, where the soldiers were transported, according to local media.
The Israeli military said on Monday that it was holding nine soldiers for questioning after allegations of “substantial abuse” of a detainee at the Sde Teiman facility, which was set up to detain Palestinians arrested in Gaza after Israel launched its war on the enclave on October 7.
The military did not disclose additional details surrounding the alleged abuse, saying only that its top legal official had launched a probe. But Israeli media reported that a Palestinian prisoner was taken to a hospital after suffering severe injuries, adding that he could not walk.
The detention was ordered after Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, Israel’s military advocate general, opened a military police investigation into the incident, according to The Times of Israel.
The detained soldiers belong to a unit known as Force 100, which is tasked with guarding the Sde Teiman facility, according to Haaretz.
Israel’s army chief condemned the protests.
“Breaking into a military base and disturbing the order there is severe behaviour that is not acceptable in any way,” Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement on Monday.
“We are in the midst of a war and actions of this type endanger the security of the state. I strongly condemn the incident, and we are working to restore order at the base,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for “an immediate calming of passions as he “strongly condemned” the storming of the facility while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We must allow the authorised parties to carry out the necessary investigations.”
‘Soldiers are not criminals’
But far-right politicians, including ministers, have rushed to defend the soldiers and asked the military to stop investigating them.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich published a video message on X telling the military advocate general to take her hands off Israel’s “heroic warriors”.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party announced they were on their way to Sde Teiman to demand the release of the soldiers.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein announced he will hold a hearing on Tuesday to discuss the arrests, saying: “Our soldiers are not criminals, and this contemptible pursuit of our soldiers is unacceptable to me.”
Justice Minister Yariv Levin said he was “shocked to see harsh pictures of soldiers being arrested”, according to Haaretz.
The Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence said, however, that the protesters were “essentially issuing a full-throated endorsement of unimaginably brutal abuse of Palestinians”.
In a statement on X, the NGO made up of army veterans also described dire conditions in the prison for Palestinian prisoners.
“Tens of dead detainees; indefinite restraints resulting in amputations; medical procedures with no anaesthesia; sleep deprivation; brutal beatings; sexual torture,” it said.
Widespread abuse
Palestinians and rights groups have documented widespread abuse inside Israeli prisons even before Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza nearly 10 months ago.
This month, a Palestinian lawyer shared harrowing accounts of rapes and torture against detainees in prisons.
Khaled Mahajna, a lawyer with the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, shared the abuse recounted by two Palestinian detainees. One of them, a journalist, described witnessing rapes of detainees from Gaza inside the Sde Teiman facility, which has been compared to Guantanamo prison.
Another detainee was stripped naked, electrocuted and subjected to sexual abuse, Mahajna said.
An investigation by The Associated Press news agency and reports by rights groups have exposed abysmal conditions at the Sde Teiman facility, the country’s largest detention centre.
A report by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, this year said detainees were subjected to ill-treatment and abuse while in Israeli custody without specifying the facility.
The Washington Post newspaper has reported about rampant violence and deprivation in Israel’s prison system after speaking to former Palestinian prisoners and lawyers and reviewing autopsy reports.
At least 12 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Israel have died from abuse in Israeli jails since October 7, according to doctors from Physicians for Human Rights Israel who were quoted by the newspaper.
The report also included witness accounts about the suffering of three of those 12 inmates.
“One Palestinian inmate died with a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards. Another met an excruciating end because a chronic condition went untreated. A third screamed for help for hours before dying,” the newspaper said.
Widespread reports of mistreatment of detainees in Israeli prisons have added to international pressure on Israel over its conduct of the Gaza war.
More than 39,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces, drawing international condemnation and calls to hold Israel accountable for using disproportionate force against civilians.
In May, the US Department of State said it was looking into allegations of Israeli abuse of Palestinian detainees.
Rights groups, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, have alleged serious abuse of detainees at the Sde Teiman facility, a former military base in the Negev desert, which Israel has announced will be phased out.
Amnesty International this month called on Israel to end the indefinite detention of Palestinians from Gaza and what it called “rampant torture” in its prisons.
Amnesty said it had documented 27 cases of Palestinians, including five women and a 14-year-old boy, who were detained “for up to four and a half months” without being able to contact their families.
More than 9,000 Palestinian have been detained since Israel launched its war on Gaza.