Scores of Israeli female soldiers fell among the dead and prisoners during the ‘Aqsa Flood’ operation on the morning of October 7, while serving in the surveillance rooms at military sites around the Gaza envelope. This incident sheds light on the roles they are assigned and their percentages in the overall Israeli army size.
Mandatory Conscription for Women
Israel is one of the few countries that impose mandatory military service on women, applying the “people’s army” theory aimed at recruiting the largest number of Israelis to increase the army’s size, especially among the reserve forces. This compensates for the relatively small population compared to the number of Arabs and Muslims in neighboring countries.
According to Israeli researcher Ayelet Shalev, the core of female Israeli soldiers dates back to the Jewish women who served in the British army during World War II. After the declaration of Israel’s establishment in 1948, they served within the Israeli army’s Women’s Corps.
There was a division of opinion among the then state leaders about imposing mandatory conscription for women. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion resolved it by asserting, “We are few, our enemies are many. If war breaks out, the men will go to fight the enemy. If women at home protecting their children do not know how to use weapons, what will their end be if they are attacked by the enemy?” However, Arab women and “Haredi” religious Jewish women were exempted from conscription for religious and political reasons.
From then until today, women comprise about a third of the Israeli army, while the number of their casualties in military operations since 1948 is around 600 enlisted women and officers.
Religious instructions do not allow a man and a woman to serve together inside a single tank (Getty)
Conscription and Roles
The mandatory service in the Israeli army is imposed when turning 18. However, the service period for women is shorter than for men, with a minimum mandatory service of two years that can extend to seven years, while men are conscripted for at least two and a half years.
The service in the reserve forces requires conscription for a period ranging from 21 to 45 days annually until the age of 44.
If a woman gets married, she is no longer obliged to serve, but she may continue in the army voluntarily. This aligns with a vision prioritizing women’s family duties as a pillar of social stability.
However, some women sometimes use nominal marriage or Torah study to evade mandatory service, considering it a waste of time and a barrier to working and saving money.
During the early decades of the occupation of Palestine, Israeli women soldiers’ services were concentrated in non-combat roles, such as nursing, teaching, social services, and administrative work, including secretarial tasks, operating phones, and communications devices.
A Turning Point
A turning point occurred in 1994 when an immigrant settler from South Africa, Alice Miller, appealed against the army’s refusal to allow her to undergo the acceptance tests for the Air Force Flight School because she was a woman. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no justification for discrimination based on sex for joining the flight school’s tests.
Although Miller herself did not pass the tests later, the court’s decision paved the way for women to join the Air Force School, with the first graduating in 1998. Amendments were made in 2000 to the conscription law allowing women to serve in all military branches, including the navy and artillery units and medical evacuation units transported by air, as well as border guard forces.
The Caracal Company was established as a mixed infantry unit with 70% women for border patrols with Egypt. Ehud Barak, during his tenure as Minister of Defense in 2011, approved the promotion of officer Orna Barbivai to the rank of Major General, leading the Personnel Directorate of the Israeli army and becoming the first woman to ever reach that high rank.
According to a study published by Israeli researcher Harel Shalev in 2020, the percentage of female soldiers in combat roles increased from 3% in 2015 to 8% in 2019. In 2020, the Israeli army announced that 92% of its military units had become available for women’s conscription.
Female recruits play the role of the eyes and ears of the Israeli army (Getty)
Rabbis Voice Opposition
However, a backlash led by rabbis and religious leaders emerged, claiming that men and women serving in certain units, like armor, do not allow for the observance of Jewish modesty laws, which are based on gender separation, as seen in schools and prayer services.
Religious instructions do not permit a man and a woman to serve together inside one tank or for a woman to act as a trainer in elite units. This debate continues amidst the linkage of military service with social and religious customs, requiring policymakers to consider religious communities, as well as secular elements in Israeli society.
With a revolution in armament technology over the past two decades and the rise of unmanned aerial vehicles requiring ground control rooms for operation, as well as the erection of a separation barrier around the Gaza Strip with advanced surveillance devices, new spaces for military service have emerged. These roles rely more on concentration and mental skills within combat support tasks, rather than the physical strength required in the battlefield itself, fitting female soldiers’ work more appropriately.
The number of Israeli female soldiers in tactical war rooms, acting as command centers to coordinate military activities, especially near the battlefields with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, has increased.
Surprise and Shock
In a field study conducted in 2021, Israeli researcher Ayelet Shalev relied on direct interviews with 40 Israeli female soldiers serving in war rooms close to Gaza to explore their experience.
The soldiers confirmed that they play the role of eyes and ears for the Israeli army, getting a broader view of the battlefield through surveillance technologies than the soldiers on the actual ground. They play a role in gathering intelligence, directing drones towards targets, guiding soldiers during combat missions, and monitoring the transfer of casualties, which requires them to stay alert, focused, and work under pressure, and cope with the psychological shocks of witnessing soldiers’ deaths on screens.
The most severe occurrence for the tactical war rooms near Gaza’s borders was their capture by Palestinian resistance elements on the morning of the ‘Aqsa Flood’, resulting in the death and capture of dozens of female soldiers who never anticipated that they would engage in face-to-face combat at their military sites’ doors.
This might lead to reconsidering their service close to tension areas, adding a new hurdle to religious currents’ reservations about women’s mixing with men in the army, interspersed with incidents of harassment and sometimes rape, with incidents exceeding 1500 annually.
Additionally, there is skepticism about their combat capabilities, prompting former Defense Minister Benny Gantz to declare in 2021 his refusal to form a company of female soldiers within the famous Golani Brigade, which conducts offensive missions requiring high physical fitness levels.
Female soldiers on the outskirts of Gaza became a tragedy within Israeli society amid the failure to rescue the female prisoners and their transformation into a sensitive card in the prisoner exchange file, leading to the death of many in the random Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. This represents a significant turning point in the history of mandatory service for women in the occupation army.
