CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Crocodiles as Prison Guards: Israeli Moat Plan Dehumanizes Palestinian Prisoners

The eye of a crocodile. Wikimedia. CC BY 2.0

When Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proposed surrounding a prison holding Palestinian security detainees with Nile crocodiles, many people dismissed the idea as political theater.

After all, the image of crocodiles patrolling a prison moat seemed so outlandish that it was easy to treat as a publicity stunt. Similar claims were also directed at Donald Trump’s now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, which appeared to serve as inspiration for the new Israeli crocodile project.

Yet despite a temporary injunction by an Israeli court preventing the transfer of crocodiles to the proposed site at Ketziot prison, Ben-Gvir and others in the Israeli government are forging ahead. On Aug. 5, 2026, just three days after the Jerusalem District Court issued the injunction, Ben-Gvir and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman visited the site, posing on a bridge overlooking a partially constructed moat and posting defiant messages on social media.

Regardless of whether Ben-Gvir’s crocodile prison is ever constructed, the very existence of this plan is revealing. As someone who studies the intersection of settler colonialism and environmental governance, I believe it highlights a longer history in which animals have been weaponized to advance settler colonial projects of dispossession, territorial control and dehumanization.

The legal life of the Nile crocodile

Nile crocodiles were thriving in parts of what are now Israel and the Palestinian territories until the late 19th century. But habitat destruction and the drainage of wetlands in the area during the late Ottoman and British mandate periods led to their eradication from the region by the early 20th century, a process that unfolded in tandem with the dispossession of local marsh-dwelling communities from this area.

Decades later, crocodiles reappeared in the region in a radically different role – not as wild animals, but as commodities. They were brought back through crocodile farms, which marketed the animals as tourist attractions and sought to profit from their skins for........

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