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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday (local time) announced the immediate suspension of all operational activities of a reserve battalion following the high-profile detention and assault of a CNN news team in the occupied West Bank last week.
According to CNN, citing an Israeli military official, the battalion, comprised of hundreds of reservists from the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda Battalion, will be withdrawn from West Bank duties and reassigned to training until further notice. The decision was ordered by IDF's Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, roughly 48 hours after CNN broadcast footage of the incident, and is seen as a significant disciplinary action by the IDF. According to CNN, the disciplinary suspension follows an incident last Thursday in the Palestinian village of Tayasir, where the CNN team, led by correspondent Jeremy Diamond, was covering the aftermath of an attack by Israeli settlers who had established an illegal outpost in the area. During the encounter, soldiers detained the crew, with one soldier seen placing CNN photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold, forcing him to the ground and damaging his camera. The team reported being held by the battalion for nearly two hours. In an official statement on its Telegram channel, the IDF said that findings from an internal inquiry were presented to the Chief of the General Staff, and based on commanders' recommendations, the reserve battalion's deployment "will be suspended." The statement added that the unit "will remain in reserve service and will undergo a process aimed at reinforcing its professional and ethical foundations" and "will resume operational activity upon completion of this process and subject to the decision of the Commander of the Central Command. " Additional command measures are expected at a later stage. The military has not detailed whether individual soldiers involved will face further disciplinary action, but it noted that accountability measures for actions during the incident are ongoing. The battalion placed on suspension is the reserve unit of Netzah Yehuda, an infantry battalion initially created to help ultra-Orthodox Jews serve in the IDF while preserving religious practices like gender separation and strict observance, as per CNN. In recent years, however, the unit--mostly deployed in the West Bank--has drawn recruits from radical right-wing settler factions, including the so-called "Hilltop Youth", CNN reported. (ANI)
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