US probing IDF unit for alleged abuse at detention facility, jeopardizing aid
State Dept. checking whether Force 100, tasked with guarding terror suspects at Sde Teiman base, violated human rights — if so, future aid would violate US’s ‘Leahy Law’
The US State Department is investigating an Israeli military unit charged with guarding Palestinian terror detainees, on suspicions that the unit has committed human rights violations, according to a Monday report by Axios.
If the State Department concludes that the allegations are true, and that Israel has not adequately addressed the violations, the US is obligated under American law to cease providing military aid to the unit and prevent it from participating in exercises with US troops.
Several soldiers in the IDF’s Force 100 unit are already facing charges in Israel of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility.
The July arrests of the soldiers accused of participating in the alleged assault prompted riots, including break-ins, at the Sde Teiman base where the soldiers were arrested, as well as the Beit Lid base, where the soldiers were then taken and held.
Protesters also disrupted a High Court of Justice hearing regarding petitions against the treatment of Palestinian terror detainees at the Sde Teiman facility.
Prominent activists, including lawmakers, some of whom are part of the government, participated in the riots.
Sde Teiman has been used to house terror operatives who allegedly participated in Hamas’s October 7 attack last year, as well as Palestinian suspects detained over the course of the subsequent war in Gaza.
The facility has faced serious allegations of human rights violations, and Israel has transferred almost all of those initially held there to other facilities. The High Court declined, however, to order the detention center closed, as several rights groups petitioned it to.
If the US State Department finds Force 100 responsible for human rights violations, the unit could be blacklisted under the 1997 “Leahy Law,” which forbids the US from providing military aid to foreign security, military, or police units that have violated human rights.
The US Embassy in Jerusalem contacted the Israeli Foreign Ministry last week, with a list of questions about the unit and its alleged crimes, Axios reported, citing two senior Israeli officials.
A similar set of questions about the unit was sent several months ago, the report said, citing a US official.
The questioning was “part of a consultation process we started with the Israelis about this unit as part of our Leahy Law agreement,” the US official said. The embassy reportedly confirmed that this was the context for the American inquiry.
Israel and the US have a memorandum of understanding requiring the US to coordinate such reviews with their Israeli counterparts, Axios noted in its report Monday, citing another American official.
The White House, pressed for comment on Monday, declined to address the report, saying only that the US has “processes in place to assess and look at things” when serious allegations are levied toward countries with a US security relationship.
In April, the US said it had determined five units of Israel’s security forces had committed human rights violations — all before the outbreak of war with Hamas’s attack last October — but declined to sanction any of them, saying four of those units had addressed their problems.
The State Department confirmed in the spring that it was investigating the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda Battalion — presumably the fifth unit referred to — over alleged human rights violations in the West Bank, but said in August that the concerns were “effectively remediated,” and did not impose sanctions.
