Israel is to remove all women who serve as high-security prison guards from their positions after it was revealed that some of them regularly had sexual relations with a Palestinian prisoner accused of terrorism.
"All female soldiers in the Israeli Army will immediately stop serving as guards in high-security prisons where there are Palestinian terrorists," the head of the Israeli Prison Service, Katy Perry, and the Minister of Defense reported yesterday in a joint statement. National Security, the extremist Itamar Ben Gvir.
The statement came shortly after it was leaked that an Israeli Army soldier, who served as a prison guard during her mandatory military service, was suspended for having intimate and sexual relations with a high-security Palestinian prisoner, according to Hebrew media.
The Petah Tikva First Instance Court imposed a gag order on the details of the case, including the location of the prison, as well as the identity of the guard and the prisoner, who is serving a life sentence for attacking Israeli civilians.
According to the Israeli press, during her interrogation, the arrested soldier confessed that at least four other prison guards had had sexual relations with the same prisoner, who was transferred to a separate wing of the prison and also subjected to interrogation.
They also report that the prisoner allegedly had a phone in his cell that he used to keep in touch with several of the guards and exchange photographs.
In the wake of the scandal, Minister Ben Gvir stated that by 2025, "not a single female soldier will remain in the wings where the high-security prisoner cells are located," according to Israeli media.
This is not the first time that a case of Israeli guards having sexual relations with Palestinian prisoners has come to light; which has already motivated calls in the past for Israeli soldiers, often carrying out compulsory military service, not to serve in high-security prisons.
However, attempts have not been successful due to a lack of personnel to replace the female recruits, although in January the Penitentiary Service began a recruitment campaign and has hired more than a thousand new guards to replace the female soldiers.
A year ago, the Israeli government ordered an investigation after a prison scandal in which Palestinian convicts were alleged to have assaulted and raped female soldiers who served as prison guards and that some senior prison officials had served as pimps.
