JERUSALEM, March 12 - Israel's military announced on Thursday that it had dropped criminal charges against five soldiers who had been accused of torturing a Palestinian detainee taken during the Gaza war. The decision has underscored deep internal disagreements in Israel about how the armed forces and its legal apparatus should handle allegations of abuse against enemy prisoners.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the move, issuing a statement that said:
"The State of Israel must hunt down its enemies, not its own heroic fighters,"reflecting a segment of public sentiment that framed the case as punitive action against soldiers engaged in wartime duties.
The case received broad attention after right-wing demonstrators, including members of Mr. Netanyahu's cabinet, breached military compounds to protest the investigation into the soldiers. The scrutiny intensified when the military's chief legal officer made public a security-camera recording of the alleged mistreatment by providing the footage to local media.
Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the advocate general who oversaw the initial prosecution, resigned in October and was subsequently arrested in connection with the leak. She said at the time that she had released the material to counter what she described as propaganda aimed at undermining the military's legal department, which is tasked with upholding the rule of law.
Her successor, Major General Itai Ofir, has moved to withdraw the indictments. In a military statement, his decision was attributed in part to "exceptional circumstances that negatively affected the ability to prosecute the case while also preserving the right for a fair trial of the defendants in the case." The statement identified one of the specific circumstances as the fact that the Palestinian alleged to have been abused "is currently present in the Gaza Strip and the implications this has on the evidentiary basis."
The contested footage originated from the Sde Teiman military detention camp, which has been used to hold Palestinians detained during the Gaza war. The recording shows soldiers separating a prisoner from others and surrounding him while one soldier holds a dog and several block the view of their actions with riot gear. The soldiers had been indicted on counts related to causing severe abuse and injury.
According to the indictment, one soldier stabbed the detainee with a sharp object, causing a tear near his rectum. The Palestinian detainee was later released back to Gaza as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in October. Names of both the detainee and the Israeli soldiers implicated in the episode have not been made public.
There was no immediate reaction from Palestinian leadership to the military's announcement.
Human rights monitoring and legal advocacy have played a role in the public debate over the facility involved. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a legal petition seeking the closure of Sde Teiman on grounds of alleged mistreatment of Palestinian detainees. The military said it had begun scaling back use of the facility in June 2024, even as rights groups and former detainees continue to allege torture and abuse in Israeli detention centers.
The withdrawal of charges in a high-profile abuse case, combined with the sequence of leaked footage, a senior legal officer's resignation and arrest, and protests by cabinet members and supporters, has left the matter unresolved in the courts while keeping questions about accountability and evidentiary hurdles at the center of public debate.