The IDF is due to indict a soldier in the coming days for beating Palestinian detainees at the controversial makeshift detention center at the IDF’s Sde Teiman army base in the South, The Jerusalem Post has confirmed.
Multiple Hebrew media outlets reported the story recently, noting that the soldier was detained around a month ago for questioning.
Some of the commanders of the soldier noticed that detainees were showing up with new bruises, which they alleged the soldier caused by beating the Palestinians during their transport between their detention cells and the interrogation areas.
Initially, there were other soldiers also arrested under suspicion of having been involved, but they were later released.
In contrast, the IDF reportedly has videos of the suspect-soldier, which he took or others took, of him beating the Palestinians, and which he has admitted to.
If the indictment is filed soon, it may be the first or among the first grave criminal indictments against a soldier of the war, given that Israel has said that the huge volume of detainees has slowed proceedings.
The case breaks as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sided with Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on the broader issues of closing down the temporary detention wing at Sde Teiman.
In June, CNN and The New York Times published stories about abuse of detainees at Sde Teiman.
These stories led to a petition to the High Court of Justice to transfer all of the detainees to a standard Israel Prison Service (IPS) facility with proper oversight, as opposed to a makeshift facility on an IDF base.
A temporary detention facility
For much of the war, Sde Teiman was used as an overflow temporary detention facility for the enormous number of Gazans the IDF arrested on the battlefield.
Eventually, those who could be tied to specific crimes were transferred to IPS facilities and those who were not, were released haphazardly and with no announcement or transparency, back to Gaza, often under cover of night.
If human rights critics might have been understanding of a temporary detention facility like Sde Teiman for the initial months of the war, long before June, there was already serious criticism of the idea of a “temporary” facility run by the IDF and not the proper IPS authorities, and without proper oversight, for more than half a year.
Despite the criticism, the government and the IDF did not act to transfer the detainees to standard IPS facilities until the High Court petition and until Baharav-Miara notified Netanyahu that defending keeping the facility could be highly problematic.
The problematic nature of the facility also took on greater force following International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan’s decision to try to arrest Netanyahu as well as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
Ben-Gvir then opposed transferring the detainees as he regularly takes the position that Palestinian detainees should have extremely minimal rights to put pressure on Hamas to return the hostages they are holding.
In contrast, Baharav-Miara, the defense establishment, and now Netanyahu, believe Hamas does not care all that much about Palestinian detainee conditions, and that Israel must act in line with global and ICC expectations on the issue.