The Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) recently announced that construction of a multi-layered marine barrier between Israel and Gaza has begun. The impetus for this project was an incident from the last round of hostilities in the Strip, dubbed operation Protective Edge, during which a squad of Hamas militants succeeded in infiltrating Israel from the sea.
The project began at the northern tip of the Gaza border, on Zikim beach. According to senior IMOD officials, construction is being headed by the Ministry’s Engineering and Construction Department. Work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
The unique barrier has been described by Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman “as one-of-a-kind in the world” and “an impenetrable breakwater.” This is due to its very meticulously designed make-up. The barrier consists of three layers, including one below sea level, a layer of armored stone, and a third layer of barbed wire. An additional smaller fence will be erected to surround the main sea barrier once it’s completed. According to Lieberman, the barrier “will effectively block any possibility of entering Israel by sea. This will further thwart Hamas’s loss of strategic capabilities,” he added.
Construction on the barrier began at the same time as Gaza activists announced plans to breach the Israeli naval blockade of the territory, which has prevented any vessel travelling more than six nautical miles from the coast since 2007. Activists planned to fill the vessel with patients needing medical care, students, and job-seeking university graduates. Its intended destination was not announced. On 29 May, a small boat did set sail from a Gaza port but was intercepted by Israeli Naval forces and brought to the coastal city of Ashdod. The boat was apparently trying to reach Cyprus.
Reportedly, the event was quite the spectacle. Hundreds of Gazans boarded more than 30 fishing boats in support of the main vessel. However, only one boat actually crossed the six-nautical-mile permitted boundary. The group that organized the boat launch has tried to frame their activities as a continuation of the Great March of Return, the months-long campaign that saw tens of thousands of Palestinians march on the border between the Strip and Israel.
Members of the so-called “Break the Siege” committee have vowed to launch another vessel in the near future.
(Credit: Facebook/International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza)
The Asymmetric Game
Tracking the hostilities between Gaza and Israel since Hamas came to power in the Strip some eleven years ago has been a story of asymmetric warfare at its most interesting.
Lacking even the most basic military hardware, Hamas has never had the ability to engage Israel head-on. It has therefore had to resort to a range of unconventional tactics to inflict damage on its neighbor. The attack tunnels that emanate out of the Strip represent the strongest example of this, and have been the terror of Israel for over twelve years. Hamas understood that tunnels represented both a strategic and psychological advantage. Strategic in that tunnels are extremely difficult to detect, and could deliver an attacker to within extremely short distances of a target. The psychological leg up was not only the fear element, but also that tunnels could be used not only for attacks, but for kidnappings as well, as it was in the infamous Gilad Shalit incident in 2006. Hostage-taking creates for Hamas a tremendous amount of leverage over Israeli policymakers. In the Shalit case, for instance, Hamas was able to extract 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in a swap in 2011.
For years the tunnel problem was considered unsolvable. While the Israeli military boasted the most advanced military technology in the world, there seemed to be no straightforward solution to address this primitive tactic. Israeli strategists had to take a step back, and focus on coming up with an innovative answer to a very unconventional threat.
Finally, in mid-2017 a series of solutions were found. Israel began building its underground defense system to address the threat of attack tunnels around August of that year. The project, estimated to cost 3 billion shekels ($833 million USD), includes a large concrete wall outfitted with sensors, and reaches dozens of meters deep into the ground. The completed structure will stand six meters high from ground level. The massive operation in recent months has seen Israel set up concrete factories near Gaza, bring foreign laborers, contract companies to flatten the construction area, and build massive sand mounds to protect the workers from Hamas attacks.
Reports of the wall represent the latest stage in this asymmetrical cat and mouse. One of Hamas’s attempts at diversifying its tactics has been the establishment of its Frogman Corps, estimated to stand at approximately 1,500 troops.
Several nations have utilized the Frogman Corps concept. (Credit: Facebook/Oleksa Sirko)
Attempts at invading Israel from the sea were first seen in the aforementioned attack during the 2014 conflict. Although all the Hamas operatives were identified and neutralized swiftly, the operation did stand as a proof of concept. Israel’s coast was a weak spot. Thus Hamas began investing heavily in developing “marine” type tactics. The marine wall currently being built by Israel is a direct response to this.
The last move by Israel to address asymmetric tactics of Hamas was pretty successful. In September 2017, shortly after construction of the underground barrier began, the Israeli military reported that Hamas appeared to be changing its tunnel strategy, shifting from a focus on border-crossing attack routes to more “internal defense structures.” Practically, this meant that instead of constructing tunnels with the goal of infiltrating Israel or attacking civilians across the border, Hamas has instead been working on bolstering its network of tunnels under Gaza itself. No doubt the obstacle presented by the new border defenses was a primary factor in Hamas’s strategy shift.
Israel hopes to see the marine wall accomplish the same thing. With the vulnerability of the coast shored up, Hamas will have little incentive to develop its latest invasion-by-sea strategy.
