Gaza Fence Not Designed to Prevent Mass Invasion On Its Own, According to its Creator

ISRAEL (VINnews) — The border fence between Israel and Gaza was not designed to prevent the kind of invasion that took place on October 7, when large groups of terrorists attacked, burst through, blew up, and even bulldozed the barrier in multiple locations.

In a 2018 interview with Bloomberg, the former CEO of the defense firm that constructed and maintained the barrier, confirmed that the wall could be breached. Saar Koursh indicated the wall’s purpose was to alert, rather than prevent, and stressed that the barrier “wasn’t built to stop riots” but rather “to give real-time indication if somebody is trying to cross the border.”

“It would take about 30 seconds to cross,” Koursh said when Hamas was organizing “March of Return” riots at the border and vowing to gather 100,000 Gazans to storm the fence.

At the time, the IDF said that it was beefing up the barrier with tanks, drones, and snipers.

Magal Security Systems was contracted to construct the barrier in 2002, and it was fortified after the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, and has been upgraded multiple times since.

Magal was contracted to develop a new and improved “smart fence”, called the Iron Wall, which was completed in December 2021. The project featured new sensors, radar and detection equipment, as well as a new underground wall and maritime barrier.

In the interview, Koursh, then CEO of Magal, said that the fence could not prevent thousands of people attempting to breach or dismantle it. “This fence wasn’t built to stop riots like you see now. It was built to give real-time indication if somebody is trying to cross the border.”

Koursh indicated that the barrier needed to be enhanced by the proper array of strategic military measures, in order to be effective. “When you combine several technologies all together with the military, then you have an effective barrier, a system in place that can deter, delay and detect,” he said.

The massive attack on October 7 came under cover of a barrage of missiles, and involved sniper fire, explosives dropped from drones on lookout towers, and bulldozers that tore through the barrier at an estimated 30 places.

According to the New York Times, citing initial assessments by security officials, the operational failure began when an urgent alert early on the morning by intelligence officials about a sudden surge of activity in Hamas communication networks wasn’t acted upon by border guards, who presumably didn’t get it or didn’t read it.

But one of the main failures was reportedly an overreliance on the remote-controlled border fence and insufficient defenses, which allowed drones to bomb and disable communication towers, surveillance centers and remotely operated machine guns near the border, as well as disabling security cameras with sniper fire, instantly rendering the border defenseless.

Not nearly enough soldiers were stationed near the border, and according to reports, the reasons are because forces had been diverted to the West Bank and because the reliance on the advanced system led the military to believe that a human presence was not necessary.