Free Republic

TEL AVIV – As the debate over Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border continues to dominate the presidential race, Israel is reportedly planning to move ahead with a massive above and underground concrete barrier along the entire border with the Gaza Strip. The barrier was revealed on Thursday in a story splashed across the cover of Yedioth Aharonot, Israel’s largest daily newspaper. The story was published with the approval of the country’s defense ministry. Yedioth’s affiliated website, Ynetnews, has the details:

Egypt's pumping of salt water from the nearby Mediterranean into the tunnels is not only creating a mess as it rises to the surface. Palestinian officials say it is also contaminating water supplies as well as threatening to wreck farmland and spread disease. Local residents say that at the peak of the tunnel business, after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel tightened a closure of its crossings into the enclave, nearly 2,500 underground passages snaked under the border with Egypt. The direction of traffic was mainly into Gaza. Commercial goods - and weapons smuggled in separate...

Up to 200 smuggling tunnels shut since Egyptian President Morsi took office; some 30% of all goods reach Gaza through tunnels. Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said. The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years. Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on...

Yediot Ahronot: Egypt proposes water barrier and kilometer wide sterile zone in Philadelphi Corridor Dr. Aaron Lerner 23 February 2007 Yediot Ahronot correspondent Alex Fishman reported in the 21 February edition that Egypt proposed to Israel to dig a deep trench on the Philadelphi Corridor to be flooded with water from the Mediterranean in order to prevent smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza Strip. According to Fishman, the Egyptians raised the proposal during meetings with IDF officials and U.S. General Dayton along with a proposal to create a sterile cleared kilometer wide band on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi...

JERUSALEM, June 17 (Reuters) - Israel set in motion a plan on Thursday to dig a moat along the Gaza-Egypt border, inviting contractor bids for the project meant to prevent arms reaching Palestinian militants through tunnels. The Defence Ministry published the bid notice 11 days after the cabinet approved in principle a Gaza withdrawal plan, under which Israel would keep a narrow corridor on the Egyptian frontier pending possible security arrangements with Cairo. Inviting bids by July 12, the ministry said the southern Gaza Strip "canal" would be 15 metres (50 ft) to 25 metres (80 ft) deep and stretch...

alestinian sources report large IDF forces in the southern Gaza Strip ahead of expected operations to widen the Philadelphia corridor. Meanwhile, some 3000 Palestinians fled their homes in Rafah on Sunday following the High Court of Justice's turning down of a petition filed by 13 Palestinian residents against the IDF's decision to demolish houses adjacent to the Phildelphia Route in Rafah, Ynet reported. Advertisement The IDF revealed plans Sunday to create a 60 meter wide underground canal, 20 meters deep that is aimed at preventing the forging of arms-smuggling tunnels from the Egyptian side of Rafah to the Palestinian side....

The roadside bomb that killed four Americans recently had to have been imported into the Gaza Strip from someplace. Odds are, it came from underground tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Countless other weapons used in terrorist attacks against Israelis in recent years have also arrived via those same subterranean routes. So, while Egypt may not be directly responsible for the attacks that take place in Gaza, it has indirectly allowed Gaza's terrorists to arm themselves. In other words, it's time for Cairo to see the light, and put an end to the tunnels. Over the last ten years,...