‘Deep moral deterioration’ being normalised in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The far-right mob attack on two Israel Defense Forces bases in support of soldiers accused of sexually torturing a detainee did not come out of the blue – the parallels to a 2016 incident were immediately obvious.

In March that year, Elor Azaria, an IDF soldier serving in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, calmly walked over to Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, an injured Palestinian knife attacker lying on the ground, and shot him in the head . A video of the killing released by a human rights group led to political uproar.

IDF commanders and many political figures, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned Azaria’s actions as a breach of the military’s ethical codes that must be prosecuted. But the right-wing reaction was swift and fierce. Polls suggested that more than half the Israeli public supported Azaria, and protests were held in his defence.

Both the political and military establishments in Israel have been willing to deny or turn a blind eye to the repeated allegations of torture at Sde Teiman

Netanyahu, playing to his base, appeared to change his mind: the prime minister went on to criticise his generals for investigating Azaria, and eventually joined calls for the soldier’s pardon. Azaria served nine months of an 14-month sentence for manslaughter, and was released in 2018 to a hero’s welcome.

A retaliatory rampage carried out by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian town of Huwara in February last year was another grim incident, as are continuing well-documented war crimes such as looting, and the burning of food supplies and homes by IDF soldiers in Gaza.

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But until this week, government ministers had refrained from acts of violence themselves. On Monday, Israeli military police raided Sde Teiman, an IDF base in the Negev desert that has turned into a notorious Guantánamo-like detention centre for Palestinians since the war in Gaza began, arresting nine soldiers suspected of severe torture and sexual abuse of a prisoner.

The detainee, a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba unit that carried out the 7 October attack, was admitted to hospital earlier this month and underwent surgery. The hospital is believed to have set off the investigation by following procedures for victims of sexual assault.

What followed after news of the arrests spread was an astonishing insight into the political currents roiling Israeli society: about 200 right-wing demonstrators, including several members of the Knesset and government ministers, broke into the base in protest at the arrests and only dispersed several hours later after the reported use of teargas.

Another confrontation then broke out between military police and soldiers, who barricaded themselves inside in solidarity with their arrested colleagues, Israeli media reported. There were also clashes with approximately 300 protesters at a military police base in central Israel, where demonstrators attacked journalists.

The left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz described Monday’s events as evidence of a “deep moral deterioration that has developed during the long years of the occupation … along with the loosening of the rules and restraints”.

Allegations of abuse of Palestinians detained en masse in Gaza and held at Sde Teiman are rife, but Monday’s arrests do not represent a newfound sense of responsibility towards Palestinian prisoners from the Israeli state.

While the government has said it plans to move Palestinian detainees elsewhere, for now the base is still being used as a holding facility.

Conditions for Palestinians held in regular Israeli prisons are not much better, and since 7 October Israel has broken international law by refusing to let Red Cross inspectors visit detention facilities.

Investigations into alleged IDF abuses of Palestinians are vanishingly rare and prosecutions are even rarer. It seems that the only reason an inquiry was launched into this incident is because hospital officials who treated the victim off-base raised the alarm.

If anything, it seems that heinous violence is becoming increasingly normalised in the latest round of bloodletting in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, set in motion by Hamas’s 7 October attack. A recent UN report has estimated 27 detainees have died in custody on Israeli military bases and at least four more have died in the Israeli prison system from beatings or denial of medical treatment since the war began.

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Both the political and military establishments in Israel have been willing to deny or turn a blind eye to the repeated allegations of torture at Sde Teiman, encouraging brutal treatment of prisoners and reinforcing a culture of impunity.

A key principle of international law is complementarity, which prevents the international courts of justice at The Hague from pursuing war crimes charges if they are subject to credible state-level investigations or criminal proceedings. Prosecutors there will have noted Monday’s dramatic events in their efforts to determine whether Israel is able – or willing – to investigate itself.

Israel’s enemies will also be watching, closely following what they see as internal disunity and weakness. The IDF said in a statement on Tuesday that the attacks were damaging to national security and three combat battalions scheduled for deployment to Gaza have instead been diverted to Beit Lid.

The rioting at the army bases on Monday in defence of soldiers accused of terrible crimes was not the first recent indication of the Israeli right’s diminishing respect for human dignity and the rule of law. It is unlikely to be the last.