Far-right MK Zvi Sukkot summoned for police questioning over 2024 IDF base break-in

Far-right lawmaker Zvi Sukkot received a summons Monday for questioning by the Southern District police’s fraud division regarding last year’s break-in to the IDF’s Sde Teiman base, Hebrew media reported.

He agreed to present himself to investigators on November 11, when he is to be questioned under caution.

Two other lawmakers who are similarly being probed have so far refused to be interviewed.

Sukkot, of the Religious Zionism party, was among a mob that rioted outside the military base in July 2024, after Military Police sparked outrage on the right by detaining several reservists on suspicion of severely abusing a Palestinian terror detainee held there. Five IDF reservists were indicted earlier this year over the abuse.

During the break-in, Sukkot was filmed pushing through the gates of the base despite IDF efforts to block his entrance.

Days after the incident, Sukkot doubled down on his actions in the Knesset, insisting that he had been doing his job and that he was permitted to enter “any place in the State of Israel” for the purpose of oversight.

Likud MK Nissim Vaturi and Otzma Yehudit MK Amichai Eliyahu entered the base alongside Sukkot.

In March this year, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Prosecutor Amit Aisman authorized a police probe of the three politicians who joined the riot.

Both Eliyahu and Vaturi have vowed not to show up for questioning.

Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen took part in the demonstration but is not known to have broken into the compound with his fellow lawmakers.

Amid an influx of Palestinian detainees due to the Gaza war, the military opened a detention facility at a base located in Sde Teiman in southern Israel, where it held Gazans suspected of terror activities. Various reports alleged widespread misconduct and abuse of detainees at the site, including extreme use of physical restraints, beatings, neglect of medical problems, arbitrary punishments, and more.

This led the army to launch a number of investigations related to incidents at the facility.

When Military Police arrived at Sde Teiman on July 29 seeking to detain the soldiers in connection to an incident of suspected “serious abuse of a detainee,” angry riots broke out that included the far-right politicians and other activists storming two IDF facilities, demanding the soldiers be released.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-defense minister Yoav Gallant and then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi all condemned the break-in.

Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, Sde Teiman was used to hold more than 1,000 detainees from Gaza who were suspected of terrorist activity. The majority were suspected of taking part in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, though some were arrested during the subsequent IDF campaign in Gaza.

A petition was filed last year to the High Court of Justice demanding that the facility be shut down amid the accusations. In a ruling in September 2024, the court warned the state that it must abide by the law, but did not order the government to shut the prison down.

The court noted that conditions at Sde Teiman had changed significantly since the motion was filed. Amid the legal pressure, the government vastly reduced the number of detainees held at the facility from some 700 at its peak to several dozen as of the end of August of that year.

The government also told the court in a written submission that it had reduced the use of restraints and was providing food and medical treatment in accordance with the requirements of the law.