A senior Hamas official shared with Newsweek the Islamist group’s reaction to new allegations of abuses of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel that have prompted an internal investigation by the Israeli military, infighting among officials and confrontations on the ground.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Monday that the Military Advocate General’s Corps had opened the probe “following suspected substantial abuse of a detainee” at the Sde Teiman camp that holds Palestinians suspected of being members of Hamas, including its elite Nakhba unit. An IDF spokesperson told Newsweek that “9 suspects who were at the base were detained for questioning on suspicion of serious abuse of a detainee” and “were transferred for questioning by the military police.”
The detention prompted tense stand-offs between Israeli soldiers and right-wing protesters, some of them masked and armed, who stormed the Sde Teiman facility and the Beit Lid military base, demanding the release of the detained reservists. The IDF spokesperson said that “the incident is over” now.
Israel and Hamas have long accused one another of human rights violations, including prisoner abuse and war crimes, especially since the outbreak of the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by a Hamas-led attack against Israel on October 7.
In response to the latest developments, which reports by the Times of Israel and a number of other Israeli outlets said prompted the unidentified Palestinian detainee’s hospitalization with signs of serious abuse, including injuries to his anus, Hamas spokesperson and former Health Minister Basem Naim called the allegations “very dangerous and very worrying.”
At the same time, he said “it is not shocking to us because we know a lot of what is happening inside the prison through the prisoners who are released every now and then and are deported to the southern Gaza Strip.”
Right-wing Israelis demonstrate next to the Sde Teiman former military base near Beersheba against the detention for questioning of military reservists who were suspected of abuse of a detainee on July 29.
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images
Naim argued that the issue was one that Hamas has sought to bring attention to for some time and blamed media outlets for not adequately covering the situation in past instances.
“We have tried many times to issue to the media the truth about what is happening inside this prison of atrocities and brutality at the hands of the jailers and under direct orders from the Zionist Minister of Security Ben Gvir,” Naim said, “but unfortunately the international media did not deal with this information in the required manner or with the necessary moral responsibility.
“Therefore, what appeared today through the Israeli media reflects the seriousness of the situation inside Israeli prisons, especially since the Zionist Sde Teiman prison is a detention camp and is not subject to any legal oversight like the rest of the prisons.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose position as national security minister to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives him charge of the Israel Police and Israel Prison Service, was among those present alongside members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party at the pro-reservist demonstrations on Monday.
Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners has previously drawn scrutiny from international monitors as well as Israel’s top ally, the United States, which, like Israel, considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization. Naim said Hamas was unaware of the number of detainees in Sde Teiman or the conditions they were subject to because visits, including from legal representatives, are heavily restricted.
“From here,” Naim said, “we call on the international community to intervene immediately to force Israel to respect its duties as an occupying state towards the Palestinians, especially the detainees in Israeli prisons and detention centers.”
Israeli officials have often denied allegations of systematic mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners and have pointed to accusations of Hamas and other allied Palestinian factions involved in the October 7 attacks committing widespread atrocities, including the mass murder and sexual assault of civilians. Hamas has rejected such allegations.
Israeli officials estimate that about 1,200 people were killed in the coordinated series of attacks nearly 10 months ago that set off what has become the longest and deadliest war in Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has counted more than 39,300 people killed in the Hamas-controlled territory throughout the conflict.
Israeli officials estimate that more than 100 hostages seized in the attacks remain in the captivity of Hamas and other Palestinians factions in Gaza. Hamas says that about 5,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli forces amid the campaign.
A Palestinian bikes through debris from Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on July 29 amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty Images
News of the alleged abuse at Sde Teiman, the subsequent investigation and events that followed sparked mixed reactions in Israel.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement published to X, formerly Twitter, that the “intrusion of civilians into IDF bases is a serious event that seriously harms Israeli democracy and plays into the hands of our enemy during war.”
Gallant said he had spoken to IDF Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi on the matter and called on Israeli military and police personnel to take action to prevent further violations, as well as “on all elected officials to refrain from irresponsible statements that drag the IDF into the political arena.”
Halevi said that “the break-in at the Sde Teiman Base is extremely serious and against the law,” asserting that “breaking into a military base and disturbing the order there is severe behavior that is not acceptable in any way.”
“We are in the midst of a war, and actions of this type endanger the security of the state,” Halevi said. “I strongly condemn the incident, and we are working to restore order at the base.”
Ben-Gvir, however, called the detention of the reservists “shameful” and called on Gallant and Halevi, along with other IDF officials, to “back the fighters and learn from the prison service.” He added that “the summer camps and patience for the terrorists are over” and “fighters should get full backing.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose far-right National Religious Party—Religious Zionism faction also showed up at the rallies in support of the reservists on Monday, stated that “IDF soldiers deserve respect” and called on the IDF advocate general to “take your hands off our heroic warriors!” in a statement on X.
Meanwhile, negotiations toward a potential ceasefire and prisoner swap appeared to once again falter Monday as officials from both sides accused one another of deliberately disrupting the talks, the latest of which took place in Rome.
“It is clear from what the mediators conveyed that Netanyahu has once again returned to the strategy of procrastination, delay, and evasion from reaching an agreement by setting new conditions and demands that entail a retraction of what the mediators conveyed previously as an ‘Israeli’ paper, which was part of the Biden project and later a UN Security Council resolution,” Hamas said in a statement Monday.
Conflicting narratives have emerged over the contents of the three-phase ceasefire deal first proposed by U.S. President Joe Biden in late May and both sides have sought to portray the roadmap as more conducive to their respective interests. The White House has continued to promote the deal as the best chance to halt the conflict and potentially avoid an even bigger war amid worsening clashes between the IDF and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement at the Israel-Lebanon border.
Responding to Hamas’ remarks, the office of Netanyahu, who recently returned from a visit to the U.S. and speech before Congress, asserted that “Hamas is preventing an agreement.”
“Israel neither changed, nor added any condition to, the outline,” the Israeli premier’s office said. “On the contrary, as of now it is Hamas which has demanded 29 changes and has not responded to the original outline.
“Israel stands on its principles according to the original outline: Maximizing the number of living hostages, Israeli control over the Philadelphi Corridor and preventing the passage of terrorists, weapons and ammunition to the northern Gaza Strip.”
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