JNS
Smuggling, including of weapons, prompt the change in policy.
Israel has declared the area along its 130-mile border with Egypt a closed military zone to combat smuggling, Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office said on Thursday.
Katz’s order is designed to “turn the border-adjacent area into a closed military zone and change the rules of engagement to strike drone operators and smugglers by targeting any unauthorized element penetrating the off-limits area,” his office said.
Smugglers in Israel and Egypt have been collaborating to bring over restricted items from Sinai, including weapons.
The Defense Ministry’s development unit will “cooperate with the Air Force and, additionally, the National Security Council will assist on issues such as requiring by legislation licenses for using, purchasing and possessing drones,” the statement read.
Yitzhak Wasserlauf, Israel’s minister for the development of the periphery, the Negev, and the Galilee, welcomed the move.
“The border with Egypt has become a security and economic black hole, which harms primarily the Negev and the entire State of Israel. It is time to put an end to this,” Wasserlauf wrote.
Mayors in the Negev area, who for years have warned about the criminal activity of Bedouin Israelis, recently said that smuggling was exacerbating the area’s illegal arms problem.
Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Almog Cohen, a former lawmaker for Wasserlauf’s Otzma Yehudit Party, said the change in policy along the border reflected a welcome shift in Israel’s security doctrine following Oct. 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel.
Saying that “arms smuggling has intensified significantly to the point of posing a strategic threat to the security of the State of Israel,” he wrote on X: “The conception was shattered on Oct. 7 for many, and I am glad that we have awakened also on this issue of utmost importance—we will not wake up one bright morning to a weapon-bearing army threatening our cities and children.”
Israel began erecting fortified barriers along the border with Egypt in 2009, following the illegal crossing into the country of tens of thousands of Africans, in addition to the smuggling of tons of drugs each year. For decades before that year, Israel's border with Egypt had been demarcated by a low barbed wire fence, with many segments of it completely or partially covered by shifting dunes.
The barrier, towering up to 16 feet through much of its length, was completed in 2013, virtually ending the illegal migration. However, smugglers switched to drones and catapults to move contraband across the border.
