Analysis | Israel's New Gaza Border Barrier Proves That It Prefers Walls to War

Israeli soldiers walk along the newly completed Gaza border fence, on Tuesday. Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz

In the distant past, when then-U.S. President Donald Trump still fantasized about building an impenetrable barrier along the border with Mexico, American officers were sent on a study mission to Israel. The Pentagon wanted to avail itself of Israel’s experience in building the fence on the border with the Gaza Strip, in case they had to implement the president’s ambitious project. Trump was evicted from the White House and the dream of a wall like the world has never seen was set aside. But Tuesday, on the border of the Gaza Strip, Israel completed its project.

 
The Israeli project is more modest than the American one, costing only about 3.5 billion shekels ($1.1 billion) and taking three-and-a-half years. The Gaza Strip is now surrounded by a fence along 65 kilometers, using 140,000 tons of iron and steel. It is more than six meters high above ground. A wall was built underground to defend against tunnels at a depth security officials do not reveal, and many sensors and cameras have been installed along it. Military schools teach that a defensive line will always be breached, but the current line indeed seems much more resistant to breaches than Israel’s improvised past efforts to prevent infiltration from Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces have a clear advantage over the Palestinian organizations in Gaza, but sometimes strength can also be a source of weakness. In light of its superiority, Israel has become more sensitive to human losses. Since the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, successive Israeli governments, without reference to their political bent, have refrained from all-out war in the Strip, and certainly from a broad ground operation.

About three years after the most extensive Operation Protective Edge in 2014, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with rare frankness during a meeting with bereaved families at the Knesset about the state comptroller’s conclusions regarding the operation. “We didn’t want war in the south,” he said. “We tried by all means to avoid war. My intention at the time [was that] if we must, we will carry it out at a minimum price. Cost is a word that encompasses a whole world for each and every family. Our duty is to limit the price as much as possible. … The weakness of the occupation [of Gaza] is not only the cost to [families’] soldiers and civilians, but [the question of] who you will pass the territory to and who will govern it.”

 
As an alternative to an operation that would lead to many casualties and occupation, Israel fortified its defenses. First, during the Olmert-Peretz government, the Iron Dome missile defense system was developed. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continued to fire rockets, but from 2011 this became much less effective. Within a few years the current solution should improve, with development of laser technology to intercept missiles. But in Operation Protective Edge the Palestinians found a way around Iron Dome: underground. The government and the military had neglected preparations for this, as revealed in a Haaretz investigative report and later by the state comptroller’s report.

 
Netanyahu doesn’t believe in neighbors; he believes in walls. Following the operation, he launched the fence project as a complementary measure to rocket interception. Like the fence he built earlier on the Egyptian border, the barrier on the Gazan border was a grandiose, wasteful project. It can be claimed that the money might have been put to better uses, for example, by strengthening the health care or education systems. But by building the barrier in Sinai, Netanyahu completely stopped asylum seekers and labor migrants from Africa from entering Israel. In Gaza, they will probably seek and find more detours. (Hamas is now investing in smuggling and manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles and drones.) And yet, the new fence conveys to Hamas that it will be a difficult obstacle to overcome.

 
At the beginning of next year, after years of delay, a similar project is to begin on the border with Lebanon. Parts of the existing fence in the north were built in the 1970s against Fatah terrorists. Others were built around the time Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, and have worn out since then. In the neighborhood in which Israel operates, it seems that the building of fences will continue to be an essential part of the security response.

But precisely on the day when the defense minister and the chief of staff festively declare the completion of the fence on the Gaza border is when the question should be asked: What about offensive capabilities? The debate now growing in the media about an assault in Iran is not really relevant and is not based on facts. People who expect that the IDF, which has not dealt with this, practically speaking, for the past six years, will be able to attack the nuclear sites tomorrow morning simply don’t know what they’re talking about.

 
The main and more urgent question is what can the army do in the face of escalation on two fronts (Lebanon and Gaza) or three (adding the West Bank). In that case, not only will strong, proven abilities be required of the air force and Military Intelligence, but also fielding ground troops that have had no experience with a similar challenge for a few decades.