Imagine the following scenario: Dozens of combat troops on small Hyundai trucks, against hundreds of undocumented Palestinians crossing the security fence. Does it sound absurd? This is the reality that reservist soldiers are dealing with every day.
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Four months after Mohammad Jalab Abu al-Quian embarked on his terror spree in Beersheba – the first attack that sparked the difficult wave of terror – IDF reservists say with frustration that they feel helpless against the hundreds of undocumented Palestinians who are "schooling them," in their words, and crossing the fence in an endless stream.
With the eruption of the terror wave, the IDF decided to seal the fence hermetically and prohibit undocumented Palestinians from continuing to enter Israeli cities. To do this, they deployed considerable manpower, including reservists, to reinforce the sector. In some of the cases, soldiers were physically posted next to the larger holes in the fence. The fight bore fruit, and the IDF notched a significant success – tens of thousands of undocumented Palestinians were stopped in their tracks.
Four months later, however, it appears that control of this situation is eroding. While the numbers no longer reach the tens of thousands, hundreds of them are still exploiting fence breaches on a daily basis or, alternatively, using ladders to hop the fence.
The soldiers stationed in the area are frustrated and are willing to share their feelings about the situation. "They gave us tiny i10 Hyundai vehicles to fight terror. The undocumented Palestinians are making a joke of us and crossing the fence. They cut an opening and scurry through. It has to be said that it's very organized and that there are Bedouins who are running the operation. Also, those we do apprehend come right back through this sort of revolving door. There was a point where they asked us to take their names and let them go," one of the reservists told Israel Hayom.
'When it comes to the outposts, everything changes'
The frustration boiled over two weeks ago when some of the combat reservists were redeployed to bolster the units trying to prevent the "Nahala" settlement outpost operation. "All of a sudden, when someone is building an outpost, you no longer need forces to guard the fence? Come on, be serious. This isn't why we reported for reserve duty, and it proves just how questionable our effectiveness really is," they say.
"The army needs to decide if it wants to invest resources to defend the fence and stop the undocumented Palestinians, and then also act against the Bedouins who are managing the whole thing, or reassign us to other, slightly more critical tasks where we'll actually be effective," said one reservist.
It should be noted that all of the reservists who spoke to Israel Hayom agreed it was critically important to act militarily along the security fence, but the soldiers said the mission cannot be done "at half power" and that if the army wants to defend the fence it must fully commit to doing so without holding back.
'Tremendous environmental damage'
In the meantime, the IDF is continuing to build the security barrier along the Judean Desert border. The army is paving several dozen kilometers of roads and blocking unguarded routes that have even been used to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel – including the attack at Sarona market in Tel Aviv in 2016.
The area is important from an ecological perspective, and the IDF has coordinated with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and other relevant bodies to mitigate environmental damage. Some are still furious, however, over the damage that has been caused. The Kfar Etzion Field School hosted a special tour of the area last Friday, in which guides explained they were adamantly opposed to the fence due to the environmental damage it was causing but also because it wasn't necessary at all from a security standpoint.
"The government, via the defense establishment, is acting impulsively and because it has lost control of the situation on the ground it is employing destructive force incapable of preventing terrorist attacks," said Amichai Noam of the Kfar Etzion Field School. "On the other hand, the [ecological] fallout is immense. The desert's ecological system is fragile and 60 bulldozers bruising the desert leaves behind a harsh reality that can never be fixed. Going about it wildly without including the public is a generational travesty because we won't be able to leave the Judean Desert, as we knew it, to our children. We need to stop and calibrate a new course."
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The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said in response: "As part of Operation Wave Breaker to prevent terrorist attacks, the IDF is working along the seam zone and has reinforced the Judea and Samaria Division with additional battalions, with advanced technological tools, and it is moving forward with the engineering work to seal off the seam zone. The IDF is grateful and appreciates reserve duty in general, and during Operation Wave Breaker in particular. Those who serve in the reserves are given the tools to carry out their mission, and any logistical gap that arises is addressed appropriately.
"The deployment of soldiers and construction of the security barrier in the seam zone in the Judean Desert is a significant facet of Israel's defense. Thus far, the operation has led to a significant drop in the scope of infiltrators seeking to cross into Israel illegally. Crossing into Israel unchecked represents a security threat and a severe violation of the law, and therefore IDF soldiers are deployed in the sector in accordance with the situational assessments."
