The riots at the Sid Teman military base were Israel’s January 6 moment

With the Gaza War Tensions escalate between Lebanon and TehranIsrael then fell into a new domestic crisis: the collapse of the rule of law threatened to tear Israeli society apart.

The crisis is concentrated in Serious allegations of torture: Israeli soldiers at the Sde Teiman base in southern Israel Palestinian detainees subjected to physical and sexual assaultsOn Monday, Israeli military police raided the base and detained 10 Soldiers The man is believed to have tortured a detainee.

Soon after the raid, far-right demonstrators, including some reservists and sitting members of Israel’s current government, began protesting the arrests.

The rioters tore down the outer fence of Sde Teiman and entered it, hoping to release the detained soldiers by force. Video shows Feast of TabernaclesFar-right member of the Israeli Knesset, was among the mob that attacked the base. When they failed to find the soldiers, a mob attacked another military base – where Headquarters of Israel’s military court system.

Eventually, Israeli authorities restored order and did not hand over any soldiers to the rioters (two soldiers were later released without charge). However, several right-wing parties in the current ruling coalition issued statements condemning the soldiers’ arrest and Even defending participation in mob activities.

Even now, as a wider War with Hezbollah and Iran is imminentIsrael remains deeply divided over the incident, which bears striking similarities to the United States’ 2006 torture scandal. Abu Ghraib and the January 6 riots merged into one. Ahmad Tibi, a member of the Israeli Knesset from an Arab party, asked during a parliamentary debate whether Sde Teiman’s abuses were “legal to insert explosives into a person’s rectum.” In response, Hanoch Milvetsky, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that when it comes to Hamas commandos, “Everything is legal”

The situation reflects Israel’s fundamental division: a democracy within its recognized borders and a lawless dictatorship in the Palestinian territories it controls. The tension is unbearable, and it has led to Israel’s vaunted democracy increasingly resembling a shadow of dictatorship.

The riots in Sid Te Man show exactly how this process works – and why it has led even some sober Israeli analysts to begin Fear of civil war.

What happened in Sde Teiman this week was the result of two opposing legal systems colliding.

After Israel Seizure When Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, it faced a classic conqueror’s dilemma: How do you govern a land where most of the inhabitants oppose your presence?

Israel’s solution is to forgo formal annexation of the territories and instead establish a military regime to rule them “temporarily” until a more permanent solution is found. The Israeli military has a special unit called the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) that is responsible for managing the governance tasks necessary for Palestinian civilian life. The Israeli general in charge of COGAT is effectively the governor of the West Bank: the head of the military regime, whose Different legal systems Fundamentally, this has to do with the internal workings of Israel.

In Israel, political leaders are elected and citizens of all religions enjoy basic rights, such as freedom of speech and due process. In Israeli-occupied Palestine, the leader is an unelected general who grants few basic rights to Palestinian civilians. It would be a scandal if such actions were carried out against Israeli citizens, such as the torture of suspects in custody. Quite common on the West Coast This was true even before the current war.

But this does not apply to settlers, Israeli Jews living in the West Bank. They legally enjoy all the privileges of Israeli citizens, but their interactions with Palestinians often take place on land controlled by the military. While soldiers have the power to arrest settlers for violence, the IDF Tend to delegate The police took on these tasks. As a result, soldiers often turned a blind eye to the actions of radical settlers. Bullying, attacking and even killing PalestiniansSometimes, they Even join.

Sid Te Man is not in Palestinian territory; it is in Israel proper, which means that Israeli domestic rules apply. But it is a military base used to house Palestinians detained in Gaza, who appear to be being treated by West Bank standards — or possibly worse. investigation It was found that since October 7, thousands of Palestinians have been detained and living in extremely harsh conditions.

“Detainees said they were held in cage-like facilities, stripped naked and dressed only in diapers for long periods of time. Their testimonies described being blindfolded for long periods, deprived of food, sleep and water, and subjected to electric shocks and cigarette burns,” UN investigators wrote“Some detainees said they were attacked by dogs, 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 fact, the abuses of the West Bank and Gaza wars have spilled over into Israel. As American and Israeli media reported on these abuses, the Israeli government decided that it needed to start enforcing domestic Israeli law on Israeli territory. So Israel launched raids to detain Israeli soldiers suspected of severe torture, including rape, of Palestinian detainees.

This dynamic also explains the subsequent riots. The Israelis who attacked the base were hard-line supporters of Israel’s settlement movement; the MP who broke into the base, Zvi Sukkot, was himself a settler. Arrested multiple times for violence against Palestinians in the West BankThey believe that Gaza detainees should be treated according to the standards of the occupying power, not Israel. If the law is to give them rights, then the problem lies with the law, not the abuse.

That might explain why the violence spread to another base and lasted for about 12 hours.

Israel’s police force is controlled by the Ministry of National Security, which is currently led by Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right settler. Convicted eight timesIt is widely suspected that Ben Gwell Frontline support The soldiers allegedly tortured Gaza detainees and deliberately obstructed the police response to the riots (not unlike Donald Trump’s Unwilling The situation is so serious that the current Secretary of Defense, Yoav Gallant, has called for Investigation into Ben Gvir’s Conduct.

In short, what happened in Sid Te Man is what happens when two Israeli legal systems are forced to collide. When people like Sukkot and Ben Gvir come to power in the Israeli government, they expect Israel’s legal and political system to change accordingly—to start adopting the norms and procedures of the West Bank occupation. When it doesn’t, they try to make the system adapt to their lawless behavior.

Normally, they would do so through legal channels. But in Sde Teiman, they crossed the line into violence, helping to lead a small rebellion against the Israeli government.

exist My new book Reactionary spiritI think Israel today is very similar to what Abraham Lincoln described about pre-Civil War America: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Lincoln wasn’t just referring to the country being divided over slavery. He meant that slavery created two sets of laws, one for slave states and one for free states, that inevitably conflicted with each other. This tension, reflected in laws like the Fugitive Slave Act, created a situation where one side would ultimately need to prevail over the other — bringing citizens of the North and South into direct conflict over what the nation’s laws should look like. And that’s exactly what happened.

Sde Teiman shows how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict creates similar tensions. The roots of the dispute over jurisdiction The protests, which until October 7 were the largest in the country’s history, intensified after the outbreak of the Gaza war.

Far from unifying Israel, the conflict has merely exposed where Israel’s fault lines lie.

After the riots, Yair Lapid, a centrist politician and current opposition leader, argued that the unrest indicated an “existential” threat within Israel.

“The invasion of Sid Teman was a despicable and dangerous crime committed by lawmakers who have weakened and disintegrated the IDF, weakened and disintegrated the State of Israel, and eroded the foundations of our power.” He said“The politicians who abandoned hostages, gave up security, and destroyed Israeli society are now undermining the chain of command. If these people do not give up power and leave our lives, the country will face an existential crisis.”

Yet while politicians like Lapid are willing to condemn the atrocities of Ben Gvir and others, they are less willing to address the root of the problem head on: Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land. Without serious efforts to end the Gaza war and achieve a two-state solution, the roots of incidents like Sid Te Man will continue to exist. And the struggle between the two Israels will intensify as a result.

At this point, no one knows where this will ultimately lead. But there’s a good chance it won’t be good.