Druze Officer Hatem Azzam Named Israel's Deputy Prison Chief

Gondar Hatem Azzam, a member of Israel’s Druze community, was appointed deputy commissioner of the Israel Prison Service. That single sentence was the whole of the official announcement; the detail below comes from reporting on the appointment and from published material on the service itself.

Gondar is a senior officer rank in the prison service. Azzam had been head of the service’s technology and logistics division and was promoted to that rank in July 2024, when Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze community, congratulated him on reaching the service’s second-highest rank. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir approved his appointment as deputy chief commissioner in November 2025, on the recommendation of the service’s chief commissioner, Kobi Yaakobi, The Jerusalem Post reported. In the new role he is responsible for building the force, for the service’s readiness to handle threats from security prisoners and for prison governance across its facilities.

What the Israel Prison Service is

The Israel Prison Service, known in Hebrew by the acronym Shabas, is the government agency that runs the country’s prisons, and it sits under the Ministry of National Security rather than the justice ministry. As of 2014 it employed some 8,800 staff and operated 33 facilities holding roughly 25,000 inmates, about 60 per cent of them serving time for criminal offences and about 40 per cent classified as security prisoners, according to reference material on the service. That split is what makes the deputy commissioner’s brief unusual by international standards: the same organisation runs ordinary criminal custody and the detention of people held on security grounds.

Yaakobi, who recommended Azzam, became the service’s nineteenth chief commissioner in January 2024, having previously served as security secretary to Ben-Gvir, public records of the appointment show.

Why a Druze appointment is noted in Israel

The Druze are a distinct religious community, recognised in Israel as a separate confessional group with their own religious courts and spiritual leadership. An estimated 152,000 Druze live in Israel, roughly 1.6 per cent of the population, with about four in five in the Northern District and most of the remainder in the Haifa District, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Unlike most other Arabic-speaking citizens of Israel, Druze men are subject to conscription and have long served in the Israel Defense Forces and the Border Police, first as volunteers and later within the draft system, which is why Druze officers appear in the senior ranks of Israel’s uniformed services more often than their share of the population would suggest.

What the announcement did not say

The official notice gave no date for Azzam taking up the post, did not name his predecessor, and offered no biography or account of his service record. It did not say how long the appointment runs, and it did not set out what, if anything, he is expected to change in a prison system that has been under strain since the start of the war in Gaza.