Defensive Border Walls in Israel

"The technology really is groundbreaking. We now have this system which can detect and destroy terror tunnels that violate Israeli sovereignty."
"[The anti-tunnel barrier under construction] provides a significant challenge for anyone tunnelling below."
"Any attempt to tunnel into Israel ... will be detected and targeted [by the army. Eliminating the tunnel threat would not mean Gaza militants would cease their attacks on Israel]. They're training, building forces for the sea and land."
"[The underground wall would be the first such] complete underground barrier."
Lt.Col. Jonathan Conricus, Israeli Defense Forces

Israeli construction teams work on a concrete border wall to run above and below ground along the Gaza border, September 2016. (Screen capture: Ynet)

A year has so far been devoted to this mammoth undertaking, the building of an underground barrier sufficiently deep and strong to ensure that Hamas and other jihadist terrorist groups in Gaza will be unable to build  tunnels from Gaza reaching into Israel. The cost of the barrier, an underground border wall -- with an above-ground component -- will be close to $1-billion in cost for the subterranean concrete structure, meant to stretch for 64 kilometres, the first of its kind in the world.

In June of 2006 an undetected tunnel enabled Palestinian terrorists to emerge from Gaza close to the Egyptian border. Two Israeli soldiers, taken by surprise, were killed, and a third was captured and taken away. Israel is determined to make certain that no further such violent surprises occur. In the last three months alone, Israeli Defense Forces have discovered and destroyed three tunnels snaking into Israel from Gaza.

These smuggling tunnels have been used to get terrorist from Gaza into Egypt's Sinai, and to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza. The Egyptian military itself has done its utmost to destroy the tunnels. Egypt has experienced constant violence in the Sinai with Salafist Bedouin joining the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and Hamas to attack military and police outposts, killing Egyptian police and soldiers.

Palestinian terrorists from the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, squat in a tunnel, used for ferrying rockets and mortars back and forth in preparation for the next conflict with Israel, as they take part in military training in the south of the Gaza Strip on March 3, 2015. (AFP/MAHMUD HAMS)

Some of the tunnels ended up emerging in the cellars of houses built along the border. The government of President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi ordered the settlement towns by the border between Egypt and Gaza destroyed, as a result. And the military set about flooding some tunnels with sewage, destroying others with explosives, discovering more even as they destroyed those they had revealed. Egypt tried toxic gas sprayed into tunnels. And years ago it began building a subterranean border wall to prevent tunnel building. That underground wall failed to deter ongoing tunnel-building by Hamas.

The new Israeli barrier is being built east of the existing border fence separating Israel from Gaza. So far, four kilometres have been completed in the area close to the town of Sderot off the northern Gaza Strip, which has suffered countless rocket attacks from Gaza for years. Heavy machines dig deep narrow trenches to be filled with bentonite slurry to keep the trench from collapse. At that point metal reinforcing cages are inserted; tubes suck out the slurry and the trench is filled with cement to become a wall about a metre in width.

The IDF feels confident that this subterranean wall being built on the border will be effective in its purpose. Underground sensors will be in place to detect any future measures by Gazan Hamas and others of their ilk to tunnel into Israel. Above ground, a 9-metre-high fence will be erected to prevent overground crossings into Israel. Many of the workers employed in this enterprise are Palestinians, and some are foreign workers from abroad.

All are equipped with bulletproof vests and helmets, to ensure their safety while moving about the site. There are five concrete factories established along the border, their sole purpose dedicated entirely to the barrier. Teams work six days a week to extend the underground wall by around 9 metres a day. The purpose of the protective wall whose depth has not been revealed, is to deter Hamas from smuggling weapons into Gaza and fighters out of Gaza into Israel.

Predictably, Palestinians and the  human rights groups supporting them claim the blockade represents a form of "collective punishment" inflicted on the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza. These people live impoverished lives while their leaders want for nothing. The foreign aid that trickles through from the Palestinian Authority to Hamas meant to be used to support living conditions for Gazans is taken by Hamas to fund the production of tunnels.

The amount of building materials and cement alone required for one tunnel would build countless needed homes for Gazan civilians. During the last conflict between Israel and Hamas, resulting from the unstoppable barrage of rockets being fired into Israel and the attempts by Hamas to abduct IDF soldiers, many tunnels were found and destroyed by the IDF. Nothing has stopped Hamas from its tunnel construction, not the collapses killing Hamas members, not the destruction of the tunnels by Egypt and Israel.

Perhaps good fortune will ensure that this time will be different and the tunnel construction will come to a halt. The funding for the tunnels on one side and the construction of the subterranean and above-ground walls on the other is an utter waste, when that money could be put to far better use supporting the needs of the poor and the disadvantaged on both sides of the border. Israel, intent on protecting itself from attack, and Hamas intent on destroying Israel, a formula for waste of human lives and opportunities to thrive.

Once the foundation work is completed and the ground is found to be impermeable to tunnelling there is always rockets attacking Israel, and drones at Hamas's disposal to continue with its dedicated work to eradicate Israel from the map of the Middle East. It's what they live and die for.

Work on Israel's anti-tunnel barrier on the Gaza border, 2017.   Amir Cohen / Reuters