Israel’s military said on Thursday that it had dropped a highly politicized case against five reserve soldiers charged with brutalizing a Palestinian detainee, citing difficulties with the evidence.
The announcement was the latest twist in an episode that has rocked Israel and caused an international uproar. The dismissal of the case raised anew questions about impunity for the mistreatment of Palestinians in custody, an issue that has sharply divided Israelis.
The furor over the case grew after the military’s chief legal officer, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, resigned in October over her role in leaking surveillance footage of the alleged abuse to local news media.
General Tomer-Yerushalmi said the leak had been intended to fend off calls for the prosecution to be abandoned, but members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government used it to undermine the case. Lawyers for the defendants demanded that the trial be called off, saying the legal process had been sullied.
In dropping the charges, prosecutors cited not only complications tied to the leak but also what they said was uncertainty about what had happened in July 2024, when the detainee was injured.
On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu welcomed the decision of the military’s new chief legal officer, Maj. Gen. Itai Ofir. The prime minister described the prosecution as a “blood libel” that had “defamed Israel worldwide” and said it had been “conducted in a criminal manner.”
“Israel must hunt down its enemies — not its heroic warriors,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
The case largely played out during the two-year war against Hamas in Gaza, which was paused by a cease-fire in October. The decision by military prosecutors to withdraw the charges comes as much of the world’s attention is focused on the new war being waged by Israel and the United States against Iran.
The five soldiers were initially detained on suspicion of having sexually assaulted a Palestinian man from Gaza who was being held at a detention facility in Sde Teiman, a military base in southern Israel, according to court records.
The public debate surrounding the case was inflamed by initial reports that the detainee had been raped.
In February 2025, the soldiers were charged with abuse and with causing severe injury, including breaking the ribs of the detainee, puncturing his left lung and tearing his rectum. In the end, the indictment did not include charges of sexual crimes, but it accused one of the soldiers of stabbing the detainee with a “sharp object,” causing the tear in his rectal wall.
All the reservists denied the charges against them, according to their lawyers.
The Palestinian detainee at the center of the case has since been sent back to Gaza as part of an exchange of prisoners for hostages being held by Hamas. Neither he nor the five defendants have been publicly identified by name.
In a statement Thursday detailing the reasoning behind the decision to withdraw the indictment, the military said that developments since the charges were filed had “negatively affected the ability to prosecute the case while also preserving the right for a fair trial of the defendants.”
The military noted that the video footage did not show clearly what happened during the roughly 15-minute assault, as the soldiers mostly hid themselves and the detainee behind riot shields.
The military said it was impossible to determine from the video whether the soldiers were engaging in criminal violence or were using force to suppress a detainee resisting a search.
Further complicating the case, the military said, is the fact that the detainee is now in Gaza and cannot be cross-examined. Before he left, the military said, he had offered differing versions of what had happened to the Israeli authorities.
The military said the defendants’ rights had also been infringed by the conduct of officials in the military’s judicial ranks and the overlapping police investigation into the leak.
Adi Kedar, a lawyer from Honenu, a right-wing legal organization whose members represented several of the accused soldiers, said in a statement on Thursday that the decision to drop the case was “necessary and justified,” though he said it taken too long.
“We hope that this development will restore the honor and private lives of the warriors,” Mr. Keidar said.
Groups critical of the Israeli government and the military’s conduct denounced the military’s decision to drop the charges.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a nongovernmental monitoring group that fights ill treatment in detention centers, said in a statement that it was “the latest in a long line of actions that whitewash abuses against detainees.”
It said the frequency and severity of abuse had worsened since Hamas led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza.
“The victim’s condition on arrival to hospital leaves no doubt about the assault he suffered,” the group said. And the video footage released to the public, it said, “clearly shows that the perpetrators were his captors, who for long minutes abused him with blood-chilling cruelty.”
The base where the detainee was being held became a major focus of accusations that the Israeli military mistreated detainees.
Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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