Security wall cannot protect security

Chae Byung-gun
The author is the international, diplomatic and security news director of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Haifa is a beautiful port city on the Mediterranean Sea, where you can see the beautiful sea against the blue sky on the east of the city. But when you look at the ground, you can see the charred remains of a collapsed building on an otherwise intact city block. It is the site of a suicide bombing. When I visited the Israeli city as a journalist about 20 years ago, I could smell the faint burning scent mixed with the sea breeze. It was a place where two incompatible scenes were overlapping. A metal detector was placed at the entrance of a restaurant, and soldiers carried rifles as they walked around the streets. I could feel the reality of the people living with terrorist attacks 24/7.

As I was driving on a road through an unnamed wasteland, the car suddenly faced a huge wall. “The wall was built because bullets were flying into vehicles from somewhere [in the Palestinian territory],” someone told me. The wall was called the “security wall” by the Israelis and the “separation wall” by the Palestinians.

Over the past two decades, higher and stronger walls were built meticulously in more places. By the end of 2021, a 6-meter-high, 65-kilometer-long barrier surrounding the Gaza Strip was complete. Israeli authorities called it the “Iron Wall.” According to Israeli media reports at the time, 140,000 tons of steel rebar and 2 million cubic meters of concrete were used to build the wall. The project cost 1.2 trillion won ($907.4 million).
Hamas has infiltrated Israel by digging underground tunnels and planting bombs underneath key Israeli facilities to cause damage. As underground tunnel bombing is a typical method of attack in the Middle East, the wall was built to prevent such terrorist attacks. Cameras, radars, sensors and remote-controlled weapons were installed along the wall above and below ground.
But history shows walls cannot ensure safety. In the battle between the spear and the shield, the latter always lagged behind the evolution of the former — and was structurally disadvantaged. France’s Maginot Line was breached by the unconventional German detour through the Ardennes forests. The Great Wall of China was also penetrated when Yuan Chonghuan — a military general who guarded the Shanhai Pass in the late Song Dynasty — lost his life due to the fake news spread by the Later Jin.

Israel’s wall on the border with the Hamas-controlled strip was breached last month for complex reasons. The blame cannot be laid on a single factor.

First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prompted a division of the nation’s opinions by pushing forward a judicial reform by bypassing the time-consuming yet essential process of persuading opponents to reach a social consensus. In March, when Hamas was secretly preparing for a surprise attack, the prime minister and the defense minister clashed publicly over judicial reforms.

Second, the legislature did not listen to the military’s warnings. On July 24, two Israeli generals visited the Knesset to issue a warning on the impending threat, but only two lawmakers showed up for the briefing, according to the New York Times.

A guard post set up at the Kerem Shalom border crossing to the Gaza strip from Israel. [SHUTTETSTOCK]

Third, the military and the intelligence authority failed to pinpoint the biggest threat. They instead focused on Iran and Iranian-backed Hezbollah — the militant group based in Lebanon — while paying less attention to Hamas, the newspaper said.

Fourth, Israel neglected to share intelligence with the United States, which noticeably weakened its alliance diplomacy. U.S. sources said that even if Israel had known that an attack was imminent, it would not have shared the information with the U.S., according to NBC News.
Diplomats in Seoul and foreign media reports agreed that Israel had not taken Hamas seriously. Israel certainly failed to detect and prepare for an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian militant group in Gaza. As a result, Israeli citizens were taken hostage and brutally killed. The prime minister, the legislature, the military and the diplomatic authority were all arrogant.

If you borrow Steve Jobs’s wording, they are dots that are responsible for national security. And just because one dot was irresponsible, you won’t face such massive damages since the founding of the country. But those dots were connected and created a line, and the line became a highway for the Hamas attack, which broke down Israel’s Iron Wall.

Israel is belatedly pushing for a ground war to create a Hamas-free Gaza. But the window of opportunity is closing. The international community can hardly defend Israel for killing a number of Palestinian civilians even though its own citizens are taken hostage and killed brutally. Above all, no one wants the repercussions of Israel’s war to reach their homes. There is no reason for the rest of the world to welcome a protracted war when oil prices will likely surge to shake public opinions at home. The only rule shared in the world is that “reality is cold and cruel.” Before an imminent threat, Israel was clearly divided and indifferent. A security wall is effective only when the people are ready and willing to defend their own country.