As the Gaza war escalates in Lebanon and Tehran, Israel is thrown into a new internal crisis: the collapse of the rule of law that threatens to tear Israeli society apart.
Crisis oriented Serious allegations of torture: Israeli soldiers stationed at the Sde Teiman base in southern Israel Palestinian prisoners are physically and sexually abused. On Monday, Israeli military police raided the base and made arrests 10 soldiers Considered responsible for the torture of a prisoner.
Immediately after the raid, far-right protesters – including some reserve soldiers and current members of parliament from Israel’s current government – rioted against the arrests.
Rioters tore down Sde Teiman’s outer fence and entered its premises, hoping to force the release of detained soldiers. Showed the footage JV Sukkot, a far-right member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), amid attacks on mob bases. When they fail to find the soldiers, a mob attacks another military base – which is home Headquarters of Israel’s military court system.
Eventually, Israeli authorities restored order without surrendering any soldiers to the mob (two were later released without charge). However, several right-wing parties in the current ruling coalition have issued statements condemning the army’s arrest Even protects participation in the crowd.
Even now, as the broader war with Hezbollah and Iran unfolds, Israel remains deeply divided over an incident that feels a lot like the US torture abuse scandal. Abu Ghraib and the January 6 riots go hand in hand. Ahmad Tibi, a member of the Knesset (MK) from an Arab political party, asked during a parliamentary debate on the abuse of Sedeh Tyman that “if an explosive is inserted into a person’s anus [is] Legal.” In response, Hanoch Milvetsky — a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party — said that when it comes to Hamas commandos, “Everything is valid“
It’s a situation that reflects Israel’s fundamental dichotomy: a country that is simultaneously a democracy within its recognized borders and a lawless authoritarian state in the Palestinian territories it controls. It’s an intolerable tension, one that has increasingly led domestic democracy Israel is proud to resemble its authoritarian shadow.
The riots in Sde Teiman show exactly how this process works — and why it has led some discerning Israeli analysts to begin Concerned about civil war.
How the chaos happened at Sde Teiman
What happened in Sde Teiman this week was the result of two opposing legal systems crashing into each other.
After Israel possessed The West Bank and Gaza Strip At the end of the Six Day War in 1967, it faced a classic victor’s dilemma: How do you manage a land where the majority of people living there oppose your presence?
Israel’s solution was to forgo formally annexing the territories and instead install a military regime that would rule “temporarily” until a more permanent solution could be found. A special division of the Israeli military called the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, was responsible for handling the administrative tasks necessary to run Palestinian civilian life. The Israeli general in charge of COGAT was essentially the governor of the West Bank: the head of a military regime whose legal system is fundamentally different from that operating inside Israel.
Within Israel, political leaders are determined by election, and citizens of all religions have basic rights, such as freedom of speech and the right to due process. In Israeli-occupied Palestine, the leader is an unelected general who grants Palestinian citizens few basic rights. Matters that would be scandalous if done to Israeli citizens, such as the torture of suspects in custody, Fairly common on the West Bank And so it has been before the present war.
This does not apply to Israeli Jews living in the West Bank. They are legally entitled to all privileges, including Israeli citizenship, yet their interactions with Palestinians are usually in lands controlled by the military. While soldiers are empowered to arrest settlers who commit violence, the IDF Likes to represent This kind of work to the police. The result is that soldiers often turn a blind eye while extremist settlers harass, attack and even kill Palestinians. Sometimes, they even join.
Sde Teiman is not in the Palestinian territories; This is correct in Israel, meaning domestic Israeli rules apply. But it was a military base used to house Palestinians detained in Gaza, who felt as though they were being treated at West Bank standards—or worse. A United Nations investigation It has been reported that thousands of Palestinians have been detained and held in appalling conditions since October 7.
“Detainees said they were kept in cage-like facilities, naked for long periods of time, wearing only diapers. Their statements described being blindfolded for long periods of time, deprived of food, sleep and water, and being given electric shocks and burned with cigarettes. UN investigators write. “Some prisoners said dogs were unleashed on them, and others said they were waterboarded, or had their hands tied and hung from the ceiling. Some women and men also spoke of sexual and gender-based violence.”
In effect, the lawlessness of the West Bank and the Gaza war have spilled over into Israel. When reports of the abuses appeared in both the American and Israeli press, the Israeli government decided that it had to start enforcing Israeli internal laws on Israeli territory. So the operation led to the arrest of Israeli soldiers suspected of serious torture, including rape, of a Palestinian prisoner.
This dynamic also explains the riots that followed. The Israelis who attacked the base are hardline supporters of the Israeli settlement movement; Zvi Sukkot, the base MK entered, is a settler himself There have been repeated arrests for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. They believe that Gazan prisoners should be treated according to professional standards, not Israelis. If the law was going to grant them rights, then the problem was not abuse of the law.
This may explain why the violence spread to another base and continued for about 12 hours.
The Israeli police are controlled by the Ministry of National Security, currently headed by Itamar Ben-Gavir – a far-right settler. Convicted of eight felonies. There is widespread doubt as to the identity of Ben-Giv Front support Soldiers who allegedly tortured Gazan detainee deliberately obstructed police response to riots (unlike Donald Trump reluctance 6 January to call out the National Guard). It’s serious enough that current Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has called for it An investigation into Ben-Giv’r’s behavior.
What happened in Sde Teiman, in short, is what happened when Israel’s two legal systems were forced to collide. When men like Sukkot and Ben-Gavir ascended to positions of power in the Israeli government, they expected Israel’s legal and political system to change accordingly — to begin adopting the rules and procedures of the West Bank occupation. When it doesn’t, they try to fix their lawlessness.
Usually, they do so through legal channels. But in Sde Teiman, they crossed the line into violence, helping to lead a kind of mini-rebellion against the Israeli state.
A bayit Cannot stand divided
inside my new book responsive spiritI argue that Israel today resembles Abraham Lincoln’s description of the United States before the Civil War: “A house divided cannot stand.”
By this, Lincoln did not just mean that the United States was divided over slavery. He meant that slavery created two sets of laws, one for the slave state and one for the free, which would inevitably contradict each other. This tension, embodied by issues such as the Fugitive Slave Law, created a situation where one side would ultimately prevail over the other—bringing Northern and Southern citizens into direct conflict over what the laws of the land should be. Which is exactly what happened.
Sde Teiman shows how Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians creates similar tensions. They were at the core of the fight against the judiciary that brought together the largest protests in the country’s history before October 7, and have intensified since the Gaza war began.
Instead of uniting Israel, the conflict has only shown where its fault lines lie.
After the riots, Yair Lapid – a moderate politician and current leader of the opposition – argued that it revealed an “existential” threat from within Israel.
“Infiltrating Sde Teiman is a heinous and dangerous crime by lawmakers who undermine and dismantle the IDF, weaken and dismantle the State of Israel, erode our power bases,” she said. “The politicians who abandoned hostages, abandoned security and destroyed Israeli society are now destroying the chain of command. If these people do not step down from our lives, the existence of the country will be threatened.”
But while politicians like Lapid are willing to condemn the excesses of people like Ben-Gavir, they are unwilling to clearly identify the root of the problem: Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian land. Without serious steps toward both an end to the Gaza war and a two-state solution, the root causes of incidents like SD Tieman’s will remain in place. And the fight between the two Israels will intensify accordingly.
Where that ultimately leads, at this point, is anyone’s guess. But chances are that it’s not good.
