On October 7, 2023, dozens of Hamas militants crossed the barrier which marks the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel at 29 points. The army and the intelligence services today recognize their wrongdoing.
It was reputed to be unsinkable. On October 7, it was crossed at 29 points. The great 65 kilometer barrier between Gaza and Israel cost more than a billion euros, it was presented as the tool that would protect Israelis from Hamas. A sin of pride which resulted in a fatal lack of vigilance for the Kibbutzim and the towns around Gaza.
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Rafi Babian lives in one of the 22 villages attacked on October 7. The morning of the Hamas offensive, he took to the road to try to evacuate civilians from the combat zone, including hundreds of rave party revelers, stuck in their cars: “I found myself face to face with terrorists who were sitting on a vehicle. They fired at us. I managed to turn around and take with me everyone who was driving behind me,” remembers the young man.
A barrier unsuitable for this type of attack
Rafi Babian is responsible for security at Kibbutz Aloumim, three kilometers from the barrier. It also coordinates the self-defense groups of 16 surrounding localities: “We were not ready, it was a big surprise. On a daily basis, the barrier worked very well since it was put in place. No one had managed to cross it. But it was not made for an attack on several points simultaneously.”
“The barrier was not made to withstand a war with explosive charges, bulldozers on several points simultaneously and virtually no soldiers on the other side”
Rafi Babianat franceinfo
The barrier was inaugurated a year and a half ago, in December 2021. It was then presented as a technological gem with movement sensors, automatic weapons and cameras to detect intrusions, after three and a half years of works, a billion investment… to finally be holed in 29 points on October 7.
“A perfect understanding of the weaknesses of the opposing system”
Israeli historian Simon Epstein does not mince these words: for him, it is a fiasco. “It’s a ridiculous collapse because it was considered a perfect system, which the Israelis bragged about, saying, ‘We found a way to have a quasi-automatic system that saves soldiers,’ because you don’t need to put a lot of soldiers. There, from Hamas’ point of view, there was a perfect understanding of the weaknesses of the opposing system.”
The army and the intelligence services recognize their faults. However, it would be necessary to wait until the end of the war for the investigation to begin.