Israeli rule change clears way for using crocodiles to deter prison breaks

JERUSALEM – Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman has reclassified crocodiles from wild animals to “captive-bred wildlife”, a move that clears the way for the reptiles to be used for security purposes, including to deter prison escapes.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – who reportedly proposed in December surrounding a prison for Palestinian detainees with crocodiles, a la Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility – welcomed the decision.

“Are you thinking of attempting to escape? Think again,” Ben Gvir wrote in a Facebook post on July 16, alongside an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself with a crocodile on a leash.

The caption read: “Ministers Ben Gvir and Silman are cooperating and encircling prisons with crocodiles!”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the Israel Nature and Parks Authority had opposed Ben Gvir’s proposal when he first floated the idea in 2025.

The reclassification transfers oversight of the animals from the authority to a “security body”. The Israel Prison Service, which Ben Gvir runs, is one such body.

The regulation, signed into law on July 15, stipulates that Nile crocodiles may be bred provided that “they are held by a security body... under conditions determined by the director (of the Nature and Parks Authority) to prevent their release into the wild, and subject to the Minister of Environmental Protection determining that their possession is required for security purposes”.

Israeli media reported that Ben Gvir intends to deploy crocodiles around Ketziot Prison in southern Israel, which holds many Hamas militants captured after the group’s Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the more than two-year war in Gaza.

Channel 13 said Ben Gvir’s proposal was initially “met with ridicule by several officers” at the Israel Prison Service when he raised it in 2025. AFP