Israel unveils details of new underground wall along Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM: The Israeli army on Thursday revealed details of a massive underground barrier being built along the border with the Gaza Strip.

Eventually stretching some 65 kilometres (41 miles), the concrete wall will be accompanied by motion sensors designed to detect tunnel digging and is expected to be completed by mid-2019.

The project had been previously announced, but details of its construction had been kept secret until Thursday, when journalists were allowed to view aspects of it.

The details were unveiled days after the army destroyed what it described as a tunnel intended for attacks stretching from the blockaded Palestinian enclave into Israel and eventually Egypt, at least the third uncovered and demolished in less than three months.

Tunnels were among Hamas’s most effective tools during the 2014 war with Israel.

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The devastating 2014 conflict killed 2,251 Palestinians, while more than 10,000 were wounded and 100,000 were left homeless. On the Israeli side, 74 people were killed, all but six of them soldiers.

 

 

‘Deep enough’

Workers — local and from abroad — have been labouring around the clock for nearly a year.

The barrier is being built on Israeli territory, east of the existing border fence, with four kilometres completed so far — in the area of the town of Sderot, off the northern Gaza Strip, and the Nahal Oz area near Gaza City.

The technique used is similar to that for building support walls for high-rise buildings or underground parking lots, the military official said at one of the barrier construction sites along the border.

Heavy machines dig a deep, narrow trench, filling it with bentonite slurry that keeps the trench from collapsing.

A metal reinforcing cage is inserted, with tubes sucking out the slurry and then filling the trench with cement drying into a wall approximately a metre wide.

Attack tunnels from Gaza can reach the depth of dozens of metres, with the Israeli army official only saying the new barrier would be “deep enough”.

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A new, eight-metre high border fence being erected atop the underground wall will further prevent infiltrations of Gazans into Israel, the senior official said.