Earlier this month, Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced that Israel would use Nile crocodiles as prison guards for Palestinian political prisoners.

The programme will begin at Ketziot Prison, Israel's largest, in the Naqab (Negev) desert. The prison served as a concentration camp where thousands of Palestinians were incarcerated between 1988 and 1995 during the First Intifada. Palestinians knew Ketziot as Ansar III camp.

To facilitate this plan, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman declared the crocodile a "cultivated wild animal". Under this new taxonomy, the reptiles will be released into moats around Israel's dungeons, where Palestinians are imprisoned and treated like animals.

Ben Gvir was inspired by the new Florida migrant detention centre, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz", which US President Donald Trump toured last year. This prison of horrors "sits in a vast subtropical wetland filled with alligators, crocodiles and pythons".

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