Israel’s security wall makes Gazans feel imprisoned
For the 2 million Palestinians who have been living in a tight siege in Gaza since 2006, Israel's new high-tech separation wall has turned the enclave into the world’s largest open-air prison.
Some 2.11 million people living in Gaza are feeling more and more trapped with Israel’s inauguration on Dec. 6 of the upgraded security wall on the Gaza border after three and a half years of work.
The move tightens the siege imposed on the coastal enclave ever since Hamas won the legislative elections in 2006. The blockade had intensified after Hamas took control of Gaza by force and expelled members of the Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas following bloody confrontations in 2007.
Israel had come up with the idea of the new barrier to respond to the threat posed by the tunnel network that Hamas built from Gaza into it. Hamas had used the tunnels during the 2014 war on Gaza as platforms for launching rockets toward Israel and in attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers.
The galvanized steel wall weighs about 20,000 tons and has a height of about 6 meters. It stretches both above and under the ground over 65 kilometers along the border from the new sea barrier near Zikim beach in the north to Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.
