After dozens of years of border breaches, the last section of the border fence between Israel and the Sinai has been completed. The length of the fence is 245 kilometers long, from Rafah to Eilat, and costs 1,600,000,000 NIS. It was one of Israel’s largest projects in recent years.
After three and a half years of construction, the building of the border fence with Egypt has been completed. For two and a half years, the building of the first 230 kilometers of the fence took place. It took another year and a half to build the remaining 15 kilometers along the south-western border with Israel.
The last section is characterized by deep and steep valleys, as well as hard rocks. Surprisingly, the last section was one of the busiest infiltration routes. “They passed here in the hundreds,” Brigadier-General Eran Ofir stated. “A third of the infiltrators passed via the enclosures surrounding Eilat and it was the biggest part of this section.”
At the beginning, the purpose of the fence was to halt the flow of illegal migrants from Africa. The fence stopped almost all of the job seekers, but when terrorists started to arrive in the Sinai Peninsula, the Israeli security establishment needed to add to the fence other components.
The fence will not prevent the firing of grad rockets from the Sinai, but it will make it very difficult to wage terrorist attacks from within Israeli territory. “Today, we are capable to produce better intelligence on terrorist organizations,” Southern Command Colonel Aviv Reshef stated. “We follow them and monitor them even when they are in the Sinai, and when they try to engage us, we thwart them.”
Part of the land border is very close to Eilat and there is a sea boundary that meets it. The border fence comes with an under-water component. The Israeli Defense Ministry is planning to build an additional sea fence and meanwhile, Israeli naval ships are dispatched to divide this section of the border.
Brigadier-General Eran Ofir worked on the fence for three years as the commander of the complex project. Now with its completion, he is not sure that this southern fence is the last one that Israel will build and already in recent days has discussed a fence along the Jordanian border that is in the planning phases.
Source: jerusalemonline
OUR OPINION, CONVICTION, AND SUGGESTION TO ISRAEL: Take Back The Sinai!
