Israel soldier jailed for abusing Palestinian detainees from Gaza

An Israeli military court has sentenced a soldier to seven months in prison after he admitted to the aggravated abuse of Palestinian detainees from Gaza at the Sde Teiman military detention centre.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the reservist, who it did not name, was convicted over “several incidents in which he punched the detainees with his fists and used his weapon while they were handcuffed and blindfolded”.

“These acts were committed in the presence of other soldiers, some of whom called on him to stop, and were even documented on the defendant’s mobile phone,” it added.

The Haaretz newspaper said he was the first soldier convicted of abusing Gazans held during the war with Hamas.

It cited the Beit Lid Military Court as saying the soldier admitted to three counts of aggravated abuse and one count of unbecoming conduct as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

They related to four separate incidents between January and June 2024, when he was guarding lorries transporting detainees, it said.

According to Haaretz, the court found an unspecified number of masked soldiers, whose identities remain unknown, had also participated in the abuse.

In addition to the prison term, the convicted soldier was also given a suspended sentence and demoted to the rank of private, according to the IDF.

“Soldiers have a duty to use the force entrusted to them in accordance with IDF values and orders, at all times and in times of war in particular,” the IDF said.

The Sde Teiman detention facility was set up after the start of the Gaza war 15 months ago. Since then, it has been at the centre of reports of serious abuses.

In July, far-right protesters broke into Sde Teiman after Israeli military police went there to question nine reservists suspected of raping a detainee and causing a life-threatening injury to him. Several of the reservists were subsequently arrested.

In October, a report by a UN commission of inquiry alleged that thousands of child and adult detainees from Gaza had been “subjected to widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual and gender-based violence amounting to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture and the war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence”.

Israel’s government said it rejected the accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees, and insisted that it was “fully committed to international legal standards”. It also said it had carried out thorough investigations into every complaint.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 47,550 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

According to the Israeli rights group HaMoked, 1,802 Palestinians from Gaza are currently being held as “unlawful combatants” in Israeli prisons. The figure does not include detainees being held by the military.