Dozens of Israeli female soldiers were killed and captured during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on the morning of last October 7 while serving in the control rooms at military sites in the Gaza envelope, which highlights the tasks they are assigned to and their percentage of the total size of the Israeli army.
Compulsory conscription of women
Israel is considered one of the few countries in the world that imposes compulsory military service on women, in implementation of the “people’s army” theory, which seeks to recruit the largest possible number of Israelis to increase the size of the army, especially within the reserve forces, which is sufficient to compensate for the limited population compared to the number of Arabs and Muslims. In neighboring countries.
According to Israeli researcher Ayelet Shalev, the nucleus of Israeli female soldiers goes back to the Jewish women who served in the British Army during World War II, as they worked after the announcement of the founding of Israel in 1948 within the Women’s Corps of the Israeli Army.
There was a division in opinions among the leaders of the occupying state at the time regarding obligating women to compulsory conscription, which Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion resolved by saying, “We are few, and our enemies are many. If there is a war, the men will go to fight the enemy, and if the women who are protecting their children at home do not know… How to use weapons. What will be their end if the enemy attacks them?” However, Arab women and religious “Haredi” Jews were excluded from conscription for religious and political reasons.
From then until the present time, women constitute about a third of the Israeli army, while the number of those killed in military operations since 1948 has reached about 600 female soldiers and officers.
Recruitment and assignments
Compulsory service in the Israeli army is imposed upon reaching the age of 18, but the period of service for women is shorter than for men, as the minimum period of compulsory service for them is two years and can extend to 7 years, while males are conscripted for at least two and a half years.
Service in the reserve forces requires conscription for a period ranging between 21 and 45 days annually until the age of 44.
If a woman gets married, she is not obligated to serve compulsory service, but she can continue in the army voluntarily, within a vision that gives priority to women’s family duties as a pillar of social stability.
But some women sometimes use formal marriage or Torah study as a way to evade compulsory service, considering it a waste of time and an obstacle to working and saving money.
During the first decades of the occupation of Palestine, the service of Israeli female soldiers was focused on non-combat tasks, such as nursing, teaching, social services, and administrative work, such as secretarial work and operating telephones and communications devices.
turning point
A turning point occurred in 1994 when an immigrant settler from South Africa, named Alice Miller, filed an appeal before the judiciary against the army’s refusal to allow her to take screening tests for admission to the Air Force flight school because she was a woman. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no justification for discrimination between women and men on the basis of sex. To take flight school exams.
Although Miller herself later did not pass the tests, the court’s decision opened the door for women to join the Air Force School, and the first of them graduated in 1998. Then amendments were made in 2000 to the conscription law that allowed women to serve in military service in all branches of the army, including Navy ships and the Marine Corps. Artillery and airborne medical evacuation units, as well as border guard forces.
The Caracal Company was established as a mixed infantry unit, whose ranks consisted of 70% women, to patrol the border with Egypt. Then, in 2011, Ehud Barak, while assuming the Ministry of Defense, agreed to promote officer Orna Barbivai to the rank of Major General, to head the Manpower Directorate in the Israeli army. She became the first woman ever to reach that high rank in the occupation army.
According to a study published by Israeli researcher Harel Shalev in 2020, the percentage of female recruits in combat positions increased from 3% in 2015 to 8% in 2019. The Israeli army also announced in 2020 that 92% of its military units became available for women to be recruited into them.
The rabbis object
But a backlash emerged, led by rabbis and religious leaders, arguing that the service of men and women in some units, such as armored vehicles, does not allow for the observance of Jewish rules of modesty, which are based on the separation of the sexes, as is the case in school education and prayer.
Religious instructions do not allow a man and a woman to serve together in one tank, or for a woman to work as a trainer in elite units, and this controversy still exists in light of the connection between military service and social and religious norms, which requires the decision-maker to take into account the religious sects just as he takes into account the secular components of Israeli society.
With the revolution in weaponry technologies over the last two decades and the emergence of drones that require ground control rooms to operate, in addition to the inauguration of a separation wall around the Gaza Strip equipped with advanced surveillance devices, new areas of military service have emerged that rely on focus and mental skills within combat support tasks more than relying on… The physical strength required on the battlefield itself, which is more suitable for the work of female soldiers.
The number of Israeli female soldiers has increased in tactical war rooms that serve as command centers to coordinate military activities, especially close to the battlefields with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
Surprise and shock
Israeli researcher Ayelet Shalev conducted a field study in 2021 in which she relied on direct meetings with 40 Israeli female soldiers serving in war rooms located near Gaza to learn about their experience.
Female soldiers confirmed that they play the role of eyes and ears for the Israeli army, as they see the battlefield through surveillance techniques to a greater extent than soldiers in the real field. They also play a role in collecting intelligence information, directing drones towards targets, guiding soldiers during their combat missions, and following up on the transfer of the wounded. Which requires them to be alert, focus, work under pressure, and endure the psychological trauma resulting from watching the killing of soldiers on screens.
But the most dangerous thing that happened to the tactical war rooms near the border with the Gaza Strip was that many of them fell into the hands of Palestinian resistance members on the morning of the Al-Aqsa flood, resulting in the killing and capture of dozens of female soldiers who had no idea that they would engage in face-to-face clashes at the gates of their military sites.
This may prompt them to reconsider their service near places of tension, adding a new obstacle to the religious currents’ reservations about the mixing of women with men in the army, which includes the occurrence of incidents of harassment that sometimes lead to rape, the number of which exceeds 1,500 cases of harassment annually.
In addition to this, there is skepticism about their fighting ability, which prompted former Defense Minister Benny Gantz to declare in 2021 his refusal to form a company of female soldiers within the famous Golani Brigade, which carries out offensive missions and requires high physical fitness capabilities.
Female soldiers on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip have turned into a tragedy within Israeli society in light of the failure of attempts to rescue female captives and their transformation into a sensitive card in the prisoner exchange file, leading to the killing of many of them in the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, which represents an important turning point in the process of compulsory service for women in the army. Occupation.