JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, 6 July 2007 — Israel is planning to build a sophisticated fence to prevent smuggling and infiltration across its long desert border with Egypt, an army publication reported, the latest effort to fortify the frontier. “Bamahane,” the army’s weekly magazine for soldiers, said in its current issue that the border fence would have sensors to pick up attempts to cross. Also, it would include obstacles to stop infiltrations.
The 220-kilometer (135-mile) border cuts through desolate landscape at the edge of the Sinai Desert. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979, and the border has never been heavily fortified. In some places, it is not even clearly marked. Israel sends only mobile patrols through those areas, leaving the border wide open for smugglers to bring in contraband, drugs, illegal workers, prostitutes, and, most recently, refugees from Sudan.
There is also a security threat. In January, a Palestinian suicide bomber exited Gaza to Egypt, apparently through a tunnel under the border, made his way around to the Israel-Egypt border, crossed undetected and entered the southern Israeli resort of Eilat. There he blew himself up, killing three Israelis.
The Israeli military has long warned of arms smuggling across the largely unguarded border, supplying Palestinian militants in the West Bank. The magazine quoted Col. Eitan Yitzhak, the commander of the southern sector’s engineering corps, as saying the border must be made impenetrable. “We must make sure that we have the means to prevent terror attacks like the one that took place in Eilat,” he said.
More attention has been given in recent years to the Gaza-Egypt border, the northern extension of the border with Israel. Digging dozens of tunnels over the past decade, Palestinians have smuggled in large quantities of weapons and ammunition. Israeli and Egyptian forces have been unable to stop the smuggling, though that segment of the border is only about 15 kilometers (10 miles) long, while the Israel-Egypt frontier is many times that length — underlining the scope of the task to close it off to smugglers.
Meanwhile, the Israel forces this week carried out one of the largest infantry exercises of recent years in the occupied Golan Heights region, training for conflict with Syria and Hezbollah, a report said yesterday. Supplies were airdropped, tanks provided covering fire and infantry forces trained in nonconventional warfare and countering anti-tank missile attacks.
“We are training for every possible scenario. Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and terror organizations in the West Bank,” an officer told the Israeli daily Haaretz. The Israeli Army said the exercise was not intended to signal any attack on Syria.
The Israeli forces are trying to correct shortcomings discovered during the last summer war on Lebanon, a battalion commander said. The Golani brigade lost 20 soldiers in the last war. The exercise’s goal is to prepare both mentally and actively for any future challenge. “Last year, we were less trained, we lacked resoluteness and decisiveness. With regard to mental preparation the problem lay in the sharp transition from routine to warfare,” he said.
A senior officer said that over the past year the exercises for reserve troops have increased dramatically. “The exercises are more structured. Each unit carries out specific exercises according to its goals and aims. Our emergency supplies have been renewed; there is a multi-year plan for weapons and personal equipment. Everything is based on the assumption that a reserve soldier’s preparation should be similar to that of a regular soldier,” he says.
According to the report, Israeli Army’s officers are convinced that the army has learned many lessons from the last war and that the threats to which the forces had been exposed have been dealt with, especially the threat of Hezbollah’s advanced anti-tank missiles. They believe Syria’s army has limited capabilities and its air force is far inferior to Israel’s. Therefore, a new war would resemble last year’s fighting in Lebanon — commando combat in difficult terrain with large areas controlled by anti-tank units.
