FAR-RIGHT Israeli protesters stormed an army base today in a show of support for soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian prisoner.
The attack came after the United Nations revealed that almost all of Gaza is now under an evacuation order.
The protesters, including extremist MPs from Israel’s far-right coalition government, burst into the Sde Teiman compound after military police had entered it to take the reservists into custody to continue an investigation of their behaviour.
Protesters stormed through the base to the gate and climbed fences as they chanted: “We will not abandon our friends, certainly not for terrorists.”
Israel’s military chief of staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said: “Actions of this type endanger the security of the state. I strongly condemn the incident.”
The incident also drew condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called for “an immediate calming of passions.”
However, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir claimed that the detention of the nine soldiers was “nothing less than shameful” and hailed them as “our best heroes.” Referring to the conditions in detention facilities, he added that “the summer camps and patience for the terrorists are over.”
The soldiers are accused of subjecting the prisoner, a Hamas fighter captured in Gaza, to sexual and other abuse that left him hospitalised.
After their alleged actions came to light, the Israeli military said that an inquiry had been opened “following substantial abuse of a detainee.”
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees Affairs called for an urgent international investigation by the United Nations.
Defence lawyer Nati Rom, representing three of the soldiers, claimed that they were innocent.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper broke the story last month, when it published allegations by a doctor that leg amputations had been carried out on two prisoners because of injuries inflicted by Israeli soldiers.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in central Gaza on Monday after the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders.
The UN estimates that around 86 per cent of the enclave is now subject to Israeli evacuation orders.
Gaza resident Mohammed Naserallah told Al Jazeera reporters: “We have been displaced from the north. They told us: ‘Leave to central Gaza, then to Rafah.’ We went to Rafah, then went back up to Nuseirat. We got stuck. Then we received instructions to move farther south towards al-Mawasi.”
He added: “Our life is in pieces. We have nothing, no-one but God.”
