Israeli Troops Held for Questioning in Prisoner Abuse Investigation

Israeli military police detained at least nine military reservists on Monday at an Israeli army base where thousands of Palestinians from Gaza have been held, taking them in for questioning as part of an investigation into “suspected substantial abuse of a detainee” there, the military said.

It did not give details of the abuse allegations. Several Israeli media outlets reported that the Palestinian detainee had been hospitalized with a serious injury to his anus; some outlets reported that the reservists were accused of sexually abusing the detainee.

The reservists’ detentions soon sparked a crisis at the base, called Sde Teiman, where videos posted on social media showed reservists shouting in anger about the raid — a rare instance of Israeli soldiers confronting their own.

Soon, the tensions had erupted into a full-blown standoff, videos showed, when a crowd of flag-waving civilian protesters broke into the base through its metal gates in support of the detained reservists. By late afternoon, the military said police and soldiers had driven the protesters out of the base.

The confrontation underscored how emboldened Israel’s far right has become. Among the protesters at Sde Teiman was at least one far-right lawmaker, Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party, who could be seen in one video squeezing into the base through a gate as a uniformed man tried to push him back. And Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, said soldiers must not be arrested like “criminals.”