Israel’s air force has invited female soldiers to try out for its pilot- training course, officials informed a Knesset committee on the status of women.
The invitation this week comes in the wake of a High Court of Justice ruling last month that 23-year-old Alice Miller be allowed to take the qualifying exams for the course.
The South African-born Miller began her legal battle to become a pilot two years ago.
Israeli air force officials argued that because of pregnancy and motherhood, women do not serve long enough in the air force to justify the investment in making them pilots.
The head of the force’s human resources division said Miller had already passed most of the preliminary tests. But he told the committee that Miller has been advised to wait until April, when the air force hoped to open a pilot training course that would include other female candidates.
Brig. Gen. Yisraela Oron, chief of the army’s women corps, told the Israeli daily Ma’ariv that other combat units would be opened to women in the near future.
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