Israel said it will cut ‘the umbilical cord’ with Gaza to create ‘a new security reality’ and block all crossings after annihilating Hamas in a ground invasion.
The Israeli military on Friday punished Gaza with airstrikes and authorities inched closer to bringing aid to desperate families and hospitals.
Israel to enforce buffer zone
Israel will enforce a buffer zone within the Gaza Strip once the war is over, Israel’s agriculture minister Avi Dichter said on Thursday.
In comments that seemed to refer to setting up a buffer zone in the coastal strip, Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen said on Wednesday that ‘at the end of this war, not only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, but the territory of Gaza will also decrease’.
Asked about these remarks and the possibility of setting up a buffer zone inside Gaza, Dichter said that the current situation, in which most of Israel’s border security infrastructure was several hundred metres inside Israeli territory, was no longer tenable.
‘It’s not that you started it from inside the Gaza Strip, as a buffer zone. You started it on the Israeli side — 50 to 100 metres inside . . . We understand it was a mistake, it has to be fixed,’ he said.
How many buffer zone does the border has?
The 20-foot-tall border fence currently has a 100-yard buffer zone, backed by radar, motion sensors, a deep concrete foundation to deter tunnelling, and observation towers.
Construction on the ‘smart fence’ began after 2016 and was completed in 2021.
But on October 7, Hamas launched its attacks from Gaza, bursting through the border fence and rampaging through Israel.
Dichter said they would no longer allow Gazans to approach the fence – effectively squeezing Gaza’s territory.
He said: ‘On the Gaza Strip all along, we will have a margin. And they will not be able to get in. It will be a fire zone. And no matter who you are, you will never be able to come close to the Israeli border.’
Israel previously maintained a buffer zone inside Gaza after it left the strip in 2005. But the buffer has eroded since then, partly due to indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas to ease the blockade on Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians reside.
