With Netanyahu dependent for his political survival on far-Right ministers Bezalel Smotrich, a radical settler, and National Security Minister Itamir Ben-Gvir, a settler and convicted terrorist, the radical faction of Israel’s governing coalition is increasingly a source of both domestic instability and international censure. Last night’s events were, apparently, initiated by the likely ban of arms sales to Israel by Britain’s new Labour government, which cited probable grave breaches of Palestinian prisoners’ human rights.

Yesterday, military police detained nine reservist soldiers at the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre, where 27 Palestinian prisoners have died in custody since 7 October, on charges of violently raping a male Palestinian prisoner. As military police confronted reservists at the jail, in footage shown on Israel’s Kan news network radical settlers — supported by Right-wing MPs — demonstrated at the base before later assembling at Beit Lid, where the accused soldiers are being detained.

When the settlers, supported by armed and masked soldiers, attacked Beit Lid, the IDF begged the Israeli police — under Ben-Gvir’s control — to disperse them, but the police refused, according to Israeli military correspondents. As Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli President Isaac Herzog ordered the police to “intervene and act immediately to restore law and order” and the “ministers responsible” (meaning Ben-Gvir) to calm the situation, the IDF was forced to redeploy two infantry battalions preparing to enter Gaza to secure the site.

For his part, Ben-Gvir declared that “the spectacle of military police officers coming to arrest our best heroes in the Sde Teiman detention facility is nothing less than shameful. I recommend the Defence Minister, the IDF Chief of Staff and the military authorities back up the fighters and learn from the prison service: light treatment of terrorists is over.”

With the Biden administration apparently trying to dissuade the Israeli government from a major campaign in Lebanon, the striking disorder within the country’s security establishment adds a combustible new element to an already dangerous situation. Israeli analyst Dahlia Scheindlin has characterised it as the “closest I’ve ever experienced to state breakdown” as “different parts of [the] IDF are fighting each other”, while “lawmakers are fighting the army & each other”.

Already stretched by the Gaza War, a campaign against Hezbollah is unlikely to be an easy task for the IDF, nor a diplomatically popular move for a government coming under unprecedented international censure. The growing disorder within Israeli society may act as a brake against escalation in the north; equally, it may convince Netanyahu to gamble on widening the war’s scope to prolong his survival for as long as possible. But growing dissatisfaction within Israel’s military leadership and political establishment at the mounting chaos may yet hasten his downfall. Politically, Netanyahu can’t govern without the support of the radical Right, but the radical Right is rapidly making the country ungovernable.

---

Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

arisroussinos

---