'Israel' approves $1.4bn hi-tech security barrier along Jordan border
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"Israel" approves a multi-layered barrier project along the Jordan Valley to boost its military presence and counter alleged weapons smuggling.
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The border between the occupied Palestinian territories and Jordan in the Jordan Valley area, in northern occupied Palestine, October 22, 2018 (AP)
The Israeli security cabinet approved Security Minister Israel Katz's plan to build a high-tech security barrier along Jordan's eastern border to bolster Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, Israeli media reported Sunday.
Timeline and cost
The project, which is set to begin in June, will feature a 425-kilometer (264-mile) multi-layered defense system stretching from Hamat Gader in northern occupied Palestine to the Samar Sands, north of Eilat.
The $1.4 billion program is expected to take three years and will include a physical barrier, enhanced sensors, mobile military units, and command infrastructure.
Military and political goals behind the barrier
The plan also calls for increasing Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, which is part of the occupied West Bank, through the establishment of "national mission centers," which include pre-military academies and national service institutions.
Israeli officials believe this will impede Iran's efforts to fortify the Resistance and send weapons into occupied Palestine.
Work will begin on two priority stretches totaling 80 kilometers (50 miles), while the rest of the barrier is being planned.
Currently, an old chain link fence fitted with sensors runs along portions of Jordan's border with the occupied Palestinian territories. Other areas are merely fenced with barbed wire.
Expanding fence could be 'impractical'
The new barrier will extend from Hamat Gader on the southern border of the occupied Golan Heights to the Ramon International Airport north of Eilat. A 30-kilometer (18-mile) stretch of the border with Jordan, from Eilat to Ramon Airport, has already been renovated like "Israel's" barriers with Egypt and the Gaza Strip in the 2010s.
Israeli officials estimate that tens of thousands of firearms have crossed the border over the last decade and been used by the Palestinian Resistance.
For more than a decade, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have floated the notion of extending the border fence or erecting a border wall, but many consider such an undertaking impractical owing to the length of the border and the tremendous expense.
The project was resumed following the Palestinian Resistance's Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, exposing the limitations of border infrastructure.
Late last year, the IOF announced the construction of a new division to guard the occupation's border with Jordan.
In a statement, the IOF said the decision to establish the new eastern regional division was based on an assessment of the military’s “operational needs and defense capabilities in the area," aligned with force build-up plans, wartime lessons, and the current situational evaluation.
