Israeli democracy – already damaged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and nine months of brutal warfare in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas attack on October 7 – has suffered a new assault. This time military. Following the arrest of nine reservists accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner, various members of the Israeli armed forces violently clashed. On the evening of Monday, July 29, dozens of far-right activists, accompanied by Likud MPs including Tally Gotliv, forced their way into the Sde Teiman military base, then into Beit Lid, where the defendants were being held in custody. Among them were several masked people wearing Force 100 uniforms, an army unit already accused of mistreating Palestinian detainees. Herzi Halevi, the army's chief of the general staff, came to calm the situation and was greeted by shouts calling for his resignation.
The following day, despite the gravity of these acts, the government's reaction remained measured. In a letter to the prime minister, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for an investigation into the role played by Jewish extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The police forces under his command not only failed to prevent the intrusion of ultranationalists into the Sde Teiman and Beit Lid bases but, two days after, made no arrests even though most of those behind the intrusion are identifiable on video, and are even known to the police.
Netanyahu, perhaps preoccupied with preparations for the Israeli strikes on Beirut and Tehran – which killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and possibly Hezbollah's military number two, Fouad Shukur – has yet to comment publicly on this far-right show of force. The head of government merely issued a statement calling for "immediate calm" and condemning the "intrusion," without mentioning the rioters' challenge of the rule of law. On Tuesday, July 30, a photograph posted on social media showed the prime minister in his office, in the middle of a meeting of the sub-committee for "advancing the fight against crime in the Arab sector." During this meeting organized in Jerusalem, the Likud leader declared: "We are fighting the criminal organizations on all fronts." He didn't expand.
These far-right riots reveal two central fissures in Israeli society. For Prime Minister Netanyahu, mired in three corruption trials, "anything that erodes the rule of law can be beneficial," said Haggai Matar, managing editor of the independent magazine +972. "His populist anti-elite politics are comparable to Donald Trump's in the US," the journalist said. "Disrespect for the law is completely in line with it." The other rift in Israeli society concerns the army, where two camps are increasingly at loggerheads. On the one hand, the old military elite, respectful of the State and its laws; on the other, young recruits, often linked to supremacist settler movements, responsible for numerous acts of violence, particularly in the West Bank.
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