Live Updates: Top Hamas Leader Is Killed in Iran

As Hamas’s political leader, he was central to the group’s high-stakes negotiations and diplomacy, including the stalled cease-fire deal negotiations with Israel. He was believed to be 62.

Mr. Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Shati refugee camp north of Gaza City, to Palestinian parents who in 1948 had been displaced from their home in what is now Israel, in Ashkelon. He studied at schools run by the main United Nations agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, and went on to study Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

He was arrested by the Israeli military and served several sentences in Israeli jails in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Hamas leader’s ascent to power in Gaza was aided by his mentor, the spiritual leader and a founder of Hamas, Sheik Yassin. Mr. Haniyeh served as Mr. Yassin’s personal secretary. The two were targets of an attempted Israeli assassination attempt in 2003; the next year, Mr. Yassin was killed by the Israeli military.

“You don’t have to cry,” Mr. Haniyeh told a crowd gathered outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City at the time. “You have to be steadfast, and you have to be ready for revenge.”

Leader of Hamas in Gaza

Mr. Haniyeh was named the leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2006. That year, he briefly served as prime minister of a Palestinian unity government, which was dissolved after months of tension that included armed conflict between Palestinian factions. The failure of this government was blamed in part on Hamas refusing to fulfill international conditions for recognition, including renouncing violence, recognizing Israel’s right to exist and accepting signed agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israel soon imposed sanctions and restrictions on the Gaza Strip, as did Egypt. When rockets launched from Gaza fell into Israel in 2008, Israel strengthened its blockade on Gaza. Hamas remained in control in the region, fired thousands of rockets into Israel, survived multiple wars against the Israeli military and continuously built up its military force.

In 2017, Mr. Haniyeh was named the senior leader of Hamas at a time when it was trying to soften its public image as it jockeyed for influence among Palestinians and internationally.

Mr. Haniyeh led Hamas from Qatar and Turkey in recent years. He was among the negotiators in ongoing talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to end the war in Gaza in exchange for hostages captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel.

The International Criminal Court arrest warrant

In May, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said he would seek an arrest warrant for Mr. Haniyeh. The prosecutor accused him and other Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”

In June, Hamas said that Mr. Haniyeh’s sister and her family were killed in a strike by the Israeli military on the Haniyeh family home in Gaza, an assertion the military did not confirm. In April, three of Mr. Haniyeh’s 13 sons were killed by Israeli forces in another military operation in Gaza.

He was defiant in the face of the loss, a common them in Mr. Haniyeh’s life. “We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices,” Mr. Haniyeh said at the time, noting that he’d already lost dozens of family members in the war.

The Israeli military said that the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, had been killed.

Its attack, which hit a building near a mosque and a hospital, left three civilians dead, including two children, and 74 wounded, according to a statement from Lebanon’s health ministry. The ministry said that the search for people missing under the rubble continued late Tuesday.

The neighborhood is home to high-rise buildings, shops and markets, all lining narrow streets, as well as to Umam Documentation and Research, an archive of Lebanese history founded by a Lebanese publisher and filmmaker, Lokman Slim, in 2004.

After the war with Israel left the neighborhood destroyed, Haret Hreik was rebuilt by Hezbollah, beginning in 2006. Reconstruction efforts across Lebanon proved an opportunity for Hezbollah to win support and to show its power, with the group receiving funding for the project from Iran. Hezbollah set up a tent city that housed the group’s TV station, Al-Manar, which served as both the command center for the cleanup in Haret Hreik as well as a place to receive political guests.

By 2010, Haret Hreik had risen from the ashes. With hundreds of millions of dollars in financing from Iran and donors in the Persian Gulf, polished 10-story apartment buildings lined the suburb. And new asphalt roads connected the interior and border villages of southern Lebanon — all Hezbollah areas — to the main coastal highway.

In 2014, a car bomb in the neighborhood killed at least four civilians, as conflict in Syria aggravated sectarian tensions in Lebanon. Besides Hezbollah’s media office, the residential neighborhood was also home to a construction company affiliated with the group. Posters of armed Hezbollah members who died in battle adorned lampposts. The Lebanon office of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, was also nearby.

Farnaz Fassihi, Hwaida Saad and Anushka Patil contributed reporting.

The damage was difficult to assess in the darkness: The building was surrounded by large structures, including a hospital and a mosque, and trucks and ambulances could only reach it slowly through a narrow street. Hezbollah cordoned off access to the area, preventing journalists from getting close to the site.

Videos from the aftermath showed that the area was busy when the strike took place, with many vehicles and people on the streets.

“I was just inserting my door key when I felt the building shaking,” said Fatimah, a resident of the area who asked that her full name not be used for fear of reprisals from Hezbollah. “Our house is a few meters away from where the strike happened.”

Her brother, Mehdi, said that he heard more than one explosion. “We’re not going to leave this area and my house,” he said. “We were expecting this attack.”

Roula Yafawi, 17, said she lived few kilometers from where the strike took place, but that she rushed with her mother to check on their relatives who lived in the area. She said that she, too, intended to stay home for fear of the strike’s consequences. “The casualties are civilians,” she said. “I’m expecting an escalation.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Iran’s embassy in Beirut condemned “the cowardly and criminal attack,” according to Iranian media. In a separate statement, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, also strongly condemned the attack and said it was “a clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.” He warned that Hezbollah and Lebanon had the right to retaliate against Israel and said that Iran would hold Israel and the U.S. responsible for a wider regional war.

The threat of a regional war could present Mr. Pezeshkian with the first major crisis of his presidency. Iran has maintained a dual policy of averting direct engagement in all-out war while supporting a network of militant groups that have opened fronts on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

Inauguration ceremonies are typically an occasion for Iran to showcase its domestic politics to an audience of foreign dignitaries. But this year, the volatile state of the Middle East, and Iran’s key role in shaping events through its influence over a network of militant groups, were also prominent themes.

On Tuesday, Mr. Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who has portrayed himself as a reformer and beat a hard-line conservative in a July runoff vote, placed his hand on the Quran to take the oath of office, standing at a podium decorated with green, white and red flowers — the colors of Iran’s flag. In his speech, he addressed Iran’s support for the Palestinian cause.

"We want a world where Palestinians are free from the clutches of injustice and occupation,” he said. “And the dreams of no Palestinian child is buried under the rubbles of their home. We can help realize this dream.”

Senior officials from the regional militant groups sat in the front row: Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem; Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh; the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad Al-Nakhalah; and Mohammed Abdulsalam, a Houthi spokesman.

The leaders held individual meetings with Mr. Pezeshkian in Tehran before the ceremony, also meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A video of the inauguration ceremony showed Mr. Pezeshkian and Mr. Haniyah hugging on the floor of the parliament and raising their hands jointly to make the victory sign.

In addition to the militant leaders, foreign dignitaries from more than 80 countries attended the ceremony. A day earlier, President Emmanuel Macron of France spoke with Mr. Pezeshkian on the phone and discussed escalating tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, Iranian media reported.

Mr. Pezeshkian, 69, campaigned on promising to bring about change in domestic policies — easing social restrictions on women’s hijab and internet filtering, and improving the economy through negotiations with the west to lift tough economic sanctions.

But he has pledged to continue the state’s policies toward Israel and supporting the militant groups, as determined by Mr. Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards Corps. Iran has long viewed the network of militant groups it funds, arms and supports as a line of defense and has warned that, if Israel extensively targets Hezbollah, it will face a coordinated retaliation from multiple fronts.

“Iran does not want war. It has been telling Hezbollah to keep the tensions with Israel contained. But at the same time, we will not sit by and watch our most important ally come under existential attack,” Nasser Imani, an analyst close to the government, said in a telephone interview from Tehran.

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Shukr, also known by his nom de guerre al-Hajj Mohsin, survived the Israeli assassination attempt.

The Israeli military blamed Mr. Shukr for an assault on Saturday that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights “and the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians.”

A senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, said Mr. Shukr was a close confidant of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader. After the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander, Mustafa Badreddine, in Syria in 2016, Mr. Shukr assumed some of his responsibilities, said the officials and two experts on the armed group.

The State Department has posted a bounty of up to $5 million for information on Mr. Shukr’s location after the 1983 attack on the barracks in Beirut where American and French soldiers were stationed.

Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general, described Mr. Shukr as “an experienced veteran” who had worked intensively to develop Hezbollah’s precision-guided missile apparatus. Analysts say the munitions are a particular concern for Israeli military planners.

Mr. Shukr’s history with Hezbollah goes back decades. He played a key role in several of the group’s major milestones, said Matthew Levitt, an expert on Hezbollah at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“He was part of the old guard,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a Beirut-based fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, adding, “He’s a significant figure, for sure.”

Mr. Levitt said that, at different points, Mr. Shukr oversaw Hezbollah military operations in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon, from which Israel withdrew in 2000. He later played a senior role in commanding the group in Syria, and ultimately took one of the top spots in Hezbollah’s military leadership, Mr. Levitt said.

“It’s kind of run by committee, but Fuad Shukr is more or less first among equals,” he said, adding that Mr. Shukr reported directly to Mr. Nasrallah.

Ronen Bergman contributed reporting.

The strike, which hit a residential building in a southern suburb of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah, killed at least three people, including a woman and two children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The attack fueled Western concerns that Israel’s long-running conflict with the powerful Lebanese militia could escalate further.

It was the second time during the war that the Israeli military had hit a target in or near Lebanon’s capital, after the killing of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut in January.

The Israeli military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, wrote on social media that the commander, Fuad Shukr, had directed Hezbollah’s campaign of near-daily rocket and drone barrages against Israel since the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7. He said Mr. Shukr, a close confidant of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, was similarly responsible for the strike on the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.

Hezbollah has not commented on the status of Mr. Shukr.

The explosion in Beirut came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there would be a “severe” response for the Golan Heights attack, which hit a field where young people were playing soccer. Israel blamed Hezbollah, and the group denied responsibility for the assault, which landed in the Druse Arab village of Majdal Shams. Western officials had urged Israel to exercise restraint in its response.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement that Tuesday’s attack killed at least three people — a woman and two children — and that officials were still searching the rubble for other victims. The statement did not address whether the attack had killed Mr. Shukr as Israel’s military has claimed.

Here’s what else to know:

• Hezbollah’s rocket and drone assaults into Israel have drawn frequent Israeli military responses, and the cross-border volleys have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. The hostilities have displaced about 60,000 Israelis and 100,000 Lebanese in the region.

• Both Israel and Hezbollah have for months argued that they are exercising restraint and that they do not seek a full-fledged war, preferring a diplomatic solution. Many Western nations, including United States, have repeatedly called again for the parties to avoid escalation. Hezbollah has said it will only stop its attacks if there is a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. “We do not believe that an all-out war is inevitable,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters on Tuesday. “We believe that it can still be avoided.”

• Mr. Shukr was said to be a close adviser to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and someone wanted by the U.S. government for his role in a 1983 bombing attack that killed roughly 300 American and French soldiers in Beirut.

• Israeli analysts said Hezbollah was most likely aiming at a nearby army base on Mount Hermon and did not intentionally target the village, which has often been the site of fighting. But the group’s use of inaccurate rockets in an area dotted with civilian communities could lead to the kind of unintended consequence that risk sparking an all-out war, they said.

• Since the strike on Majdal Shams on Saturday, there have been continued exchanges across the border, but they have seemed to fall within the bounds of the routine tit-for-tat of the past few months. On Tuesday, dozens of projectiles were fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel, killing one Israeli civilian in the border community of Kibbutz HaGoshrim, the Israeli military said. Hezbollah took responsibility for firing rockets and drones at Israel, including at a town near HaGoshrim. The Israeli military said it targeted the sources of fire on Israel.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, and it was not clear whether Mr. Shukr survived. The Israeli military issued a statement about the strike not long after an explosion hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, but it did not provide additional details backing up its assertion that he played a role in the Golan strike.

Tensions have soared between Israel and Hezbollah since the assault on Saturday in the Golan Heights, which killed the children and teenagers as they played soccer.

The Israeli officials who spoke about the strike on Tuesday and its target did so on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the operation.

The Israeli strike, at about 7:40 p.m on Tuesday, marked the second time that Israel had struck Beirut since Hezbollah and Israel started fighting on Oct. 8, and the first time that Israel hit a Hezbollah figure in the Lebanese capital. In January, the Israeli military killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, in Beirut.

More than 90 minutes after the strike in Beirut, three Israeli officials said it was still not clear whether Mr. Shukr had survived.

Videos and photographs posted on social media on Tuesday showed smoke rising above buildings as darkness fell over Beirut. Some showed crowds gathering in the streets of the southern suburb, a dense civilian area where Hezbollah holds sway.

The strike hit in the vicinity of Hezbollah’s Shura Council, the group’s central decision-making authority, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. Videos and photos posted to social media show what appears to be an apartment building that was heavily damaged by the strike in the Haret Hraik neighborhood in southern Beirut. A mosque and a large hospital, the Bahman Hospital, stand nearby.

“I was just opening the door of my house,” said Mohamed Awada, 52, a taxi driver who lives in Beirut’s southern suburbs, “and then I heard something like thunder and then a big explosion.”

He added, “Everybody in the street was yelling and screaming. It feels like we are already in a war.”

Fire trucks and ambulances rushed through Beirut’s streets to the scene of the strike, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. Lebanese television channels showed footage of a seriously damaged building.

In a post on X, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said Hezbollah had “crossed a red line.”

Mr. Shukr, the three senior Israeli security officials said, led Hezbollah’s precision-guided missile program, an initiative that has worried Israel’s security establishment. Following the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander, Mustafa Badreddine, in Syria in 2016, Mr. Shukr assumed some of his responsibilities, said Hanin Ghaddar, an expert of Lebanese affairs, and a senior Israeli military officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

Ms. Ghaddar said that Mr. Shukr, often nicknamed al-Hajj Mohsin, was a powerful commander within Hezbollah who was a key figure in its operations in the south of Lebanon.

“He’s a very big target,” said Ms. Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington. “He would be the biggest loss for Hezbollah since Oct. 7.”

Mr. Shukr played a key role the in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine compound in Beirut which killed 241 American servicemen and wounded 128 others, according to the website of the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program.

The program was offering up to $5 million for information on Mr. Shukr and the State Department labeled him a “specially designated global terrorist” in 2019, according to the website.

Since the war in Gaza began, Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, have traded fire across Israel’s northern border, raising fears among many officials that the conflict could escalate into a wider war that would cause devastation to its cities and towns.

Hezbollah has denied it was behind the assault that hit the Druse village of Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights, on Saturday. The Israeli military has said Hezbollah is the only militant group in the region that possesses the type of rocket used in the strike, the Iranian Falaq-1. And on Monday, John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, said unequivocally that Hezbollah was behind the strike.

The United States and other nations have urged Israeli officials to exercise restraint in the conflict with Hezbollah, warning against escalation as Israel continues its nearly 10-month campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli military has primarily targeted Hezbollah’s commanders, fighters and weapons infrastructure, and largely refrained from actions that could lead to a more substantial response from Hezbollah, like striking Beirut or major civilian targets.

Ephrat Livni , Aaron Boxerman, and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.

A New York Times analysis of the latest orders showed that the zone has shrunk by more than a fifth in recent weeks, going from encompassing nearly 17 percent of the Gaza Strip to 13 percent now. Maps and analysis of satellite imagery show that the zone is already overcrowded, frequently damaged by strikes and lacking sufficient medical services.

The Israeli military has said its recent evacuations and operations have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency, and it accused Hamas of launching rockets from the areas that came under the latest evacuation order on Sunday.

But the repeated redrawing of the zone’s borders is one more burden among many on Gaza’s 2.2 million people.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, said on Sunday that evacuation orders had affected “almost everyone in Gaza,” adding that many had been forced to flee once a month since the war began in October.

The orders bring “more misery, fear and suffering for people who have nothing to do with this war,” Mr. Lazzarini said on social media.

Since last week, Israel has evacuated more than a fifth of the area that it had previously declared a humanitarian zone.

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The Israeli military recently ordered evacuations in tandem with a ground operation in the southern city of Khan Younis, and on Tuesday it said that operation had concluded, with its forces killing more than 150 militants. In a statement, Hamas said the withdrawal revealed “horrific scenes of widespread destruction.”

The withdrawal of Israeli forces allowed some Palestinians to return to the area, where the Palestinian civil defense agency said that its emergency and rescue crews recovered nearly 300 dead bodies on Tuesday.

Some Gazans, weary of the continued orders to move, have chosen to ignore them. Mohammed Harbi, 33, said he received an automated phone call from the Israeli military on Sunday afternoon ordering him to evacuate Nuseirat in central Gaza and head to the humanitarian zone. But after five consecutive displacements, he decided he no longer wanted to put his wife and two young children through another one.

Besides, Mr. Harbi said in a phone interview, he now believes that “there is no humanitarian zone at all,” and that “there is no safety, only despair.”

Duaa Fura, 35, and her nine family members left their home in northern Gaza in the first week of the war and went to central Gaza, moving around multiple times and settling in the Bureij neighborhood nearly a month ago. But on Sunday, the family received some dreaded and familiar news from their neighbors, telling them that another evacuation had been called.

“People started leaving and running in the streets,” said Ms. Fura, who joined the crowds, running until she found a taxi to drive her and her family to the city of Deir al-Balah. “I have seven children who are exhausted from the displacement and running,” she added.

Like many displaced Gazans, Ms. Fura and her family were living in a tent that they could dismantle and take with them when they had to move. She said that if the Israeli military were to order them to move yet again, “We will do the same thing: take the tent, boxes and bags and run.” She added, “This is our life now.”

Osama al-Sammak, a 33-year-old motion graphics designer, left Bureij with his young daughter and pregnant wife on Thursday when bombardment began intensifying in the area. Just four days after they took shelter at his aunt’s house in Nuseirat, the evacuation order on Sunday sent the family fleeing once again, this time to another aunt’s house in Deir al-Balah, where they would be relatively close to a functioning hospital if his wife went into labor.

Mr. al-Sammak said most Gazans had few options for shelter. “People are sleeping on the streets. There is no more place for any tents at the beach or in Mawasi,” he added, referring to the humanitarian zone.

Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London, Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar, and Iyad Abuheweila from Istanbul.

The strike highlighted the unique and delicate role of the Arab Druse communities in Israel and the region.

Who are the Druse?

The Druse are a religious group that practices a deliberately mysterious offshoot of Islam, developed in the 11th century in Egypt, that contains elements of Christianity, Hinduism, Gnosticism and other philosophies. The sect recognizes the prophets of the Abrahamic faiths, including Jesus, John the Baptist, Muhammad and Moses, and reveres Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates.

Druse doctrine is unknown even to the majority of the Druse community and has been an enigma to religious scholars. Only a select group of male and female Druse initiates, about 20 percent of the population, are taught the intricacies of the religion — known as “the wisdom” — and they are sworn to secrecy.

The Druse are monotheists who believe in reincarnation and emphasize everyday spirituality over texts and ceremony. They do not welcome converts and frown upon intermarriage.

Where do the Druse live?

There are more than one million Druse across the Middle East, mostly in Syria and Lebanon, with some also in Jordan and Israel. Those in Druse communities, wherever they may be, generally tend to participate in national civic and political life and serve in the local military, despite maintaining a distinct culture and religious practices.

How does the Druse community relate to the state of Israel?

There are about 150,000 Druse in northern Israel and the Golan Heights. This tiny community has two distinct elements with different approaches to participation in Israeli life and institutions.

Many of the Arabic-speaking Druse in Israel identify as Israeli. They are drafted into and serve in the nation’s military, and participate in national politics.

About 20,000 Druse live in the Golan Heights, a territory once held by Syria that was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel annexed much of it in 1981. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory, though former President Donald J. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty there in 2019. And some of the Druse in the Golan Heights, including in the town hit by the rocket on Saturday, still consider themselves Syrian.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, however, there has been a slight shift among this community, and in recent years there has been an uptick in requests for Israeli citizenship.

What is the legal status of the Israeli Druse?

The Druse are widely viewed as a kind of model minority in Israel because of their longstanding engagement with the state and participation in Israeli institutions. They have been recognized as a religious minority, distinct from Christian and Muslim Arabs in Israel, since 1957.

But many Israeli Druse in recent years have felt increasingly alienated by the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right governing coalition.

In 2018, Israel passed a law that defined the right to national self-determination as being “unique to the Jewish people.” It omitted any mention of the principle of equality enshrined in Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which ensured “complete equality of social and political rights” for “all its inhabitants” no matter their religion, race or sex. And it downgraded Arabic from an official language to one with a “special status,” leaving many in the Druse community feeling betrayed.

Druse lawmakers unsuccessfully petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for changes, arguing that it created “race-based discrimination.” But the law remains in place.

Further unrest was expected on Tuesday, when a military court was expected to decide whether to extend the soldiers’ detentions.

The decision to deploy troops inside Israel came as the military leadership questions whether it has enough resources to fight in both Gaza and Lebanon, where cross-border tensions have risen after a deadly rocket attack over the weekend from Lebanon that killed 12 children and teenagers in an Israeli-controlled town.

It reflected the depth of disagreement among Israelis, including within the military, about how to detain, interrogate and punish Palestinians accused of participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent ground war in Gaza. It also highlighted a wider battle among Israelis about the future and character of their democracy, in particular over the role of the judiciary and other watchdog institutions.

Since the start of the war, the Israeli military has captured at least 4,000 Gazans, mostly from inside Gaza, and brought them to Sde Teiman, for detention and interrogation. More than 1,000 were later judged to be civilians and returned to Gaza, while others have been held on suspicion of links to Hamas and its Nukhba commando brigade.

Former detainees and some Israeli soldiers have said that guards routinely abuse Gazans held at Sde Teiman; at least 35 detainees have died either at the site or shortly after leaving it.

Amid international scrutiny of Israel’s wartime conduct, some Israelis have pushed for improvements at the base, leading rights groups have petitioned the Supreme Court to close it and military prosecutors have been more proactive about investigating allegations there.

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But many Israelis have decried this scrutiny, saying that soldiers should not be punished for how they treat prisoners believed to have committed atrocities during the Oct. 7 attacks that Israel says killed roughly 1,200 people.

This disagreement reached a boiling point on Monday when military police officers detained nine soldiers at Sde Teiman on suspicion of abusing a Palestinian detainee and transferred them to Beit Lid, a second military base.

A military doctor at the field hospital in Sde Teiman, Prof. Yoel Donchin, said in a phone interview that the Palestinian had been brought to the site’s field hospital roughly three weeks ago with signs of abuse across his body.

Professor Donchin said that the doctors there immediately sent the detainee for several days of treatment at a bigger civilian hospital and informed the military police that he might have been mistreated by either guards or fellow prisoners.

The military did not give details of the abuse allegations, but a lawyer representing three of the soldiers, Nati Rom of Honenu, a right-wing legal aid group, said on Monday that they were being questioned on suspicion of severe sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner. Several Israeli media outlets reported that the prisoner had been hospitalized with a serious injury to his anus.

Neither the professor nor the Israeli military would confirm that claim.

The unrest set off alarm from some senior politicians, who said the protesters’s actions — and the support for them from parts of the ruling coalition — threatened the rule of law and the country’s cohesion at a time when unity was most needed.

“Do we want a state here, or militias that do whatever they want?” Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, wrote on social media. “Stop pouring fuel on the fire.”

“Prevent the dissolution of the State of Israel,” Mr. Bennett said, adding that the riots were the “greatest gift” to Israel’s enemies.

But several ministers and right-wing lawmakers backed the protesters, and in some cases suggested that the need to punish Hamas superseded the military’s need to hold itself to account.

At a hearing in Parliament, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Hanoch Milwidsky, was asked whether it was acceptable to sexually abuse a detainee.

“Yes,” he replied. “If he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do. Everything.”

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.