‘It is not Lebanon and Gaza — this is the hottest and most active border’

By admin On Mar 15, 2021

While the borders with Lebanon, Syria and Gaza make most of the headlines, the actual border with the most action seems to be the one with Egypt.

The soldiers protecting the border have to deal with two main threats — the terrorism threat, which usually focuses on Wilayat Sina’ (the Sinai District), an organization with an affiliation to ISIS, and the criminal threat, which usually takes the form of drug smuggling.

The latter might seem less dangerous, but a senior source in the border protection apparatus told The Jerusalem Post that these events, which happen on a regular basis, tend to develop into live-fire incidents.

“Our commanders and soldiers are experienced in live-fire incidents more than any other front,” the source said. “Once a week, during a smuggling attempt, they [the smugglers] shoot all over, and commander and combat soldiers have felt here the bullets hovering near their heads.”

IDF officals link the success in thwarting drug smuggling through the Egyptian border to rise of crime in the Bedouin sector inside Israel (Credit: IDF)

The source said that units protecting the border have made a significant change in recent years in the way they deal with the smuggling activity.

“We have managed to cut down a large percentage of the smuggling in recent years,” he said. “Because of our success, we see a rise in the phenomenon that we dub as ‘violent smuggling.’ In these incidents, the smugglers are using live fire. In most cases, they aim at the Egyptian police officers near the border, and in some cases, we see a slip of fire into Israel.”

According to IDF stats, in 2020, there was a decrease of 11% in drug smuggling attempts through the Egyptian borders.

In that year, smuggling was thwarted 57 times successfully, compared with 34 interceptions in 2019.

The regional brigade in charge of protecting the Egyptian border, from the southern Gaza Strip to the area of Eilat, is the Paran Regional Brigade.

In recent years, the brigade — comprising two co-ed battalions, Karakal and Bardelas — focused on improving its abilities of action against the smuggling activity. The two main units focused on quickly reaching a point, when there is a smuggling attempt, to establish a mechanism in which the IDF, the Israel Police and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority all join hands in acting against such attempts.

“One of our focuses was on improving the intelligence in the region. It helped us build an ability to reach an event quickly,” a senior source in the Paran Regional Brigade told the Post.

“This shortened the time that a smuggling event takes. If back in the past, a smuggling event lasted something like 20 minutes until an IDF patrol arrived, and during which they managed to smuggle some 40 bags, now we reach them in three minutes, and the most they can [take] is three bags,” he said.

IDF officals link the success in thwarting drug smuggling through the Egyptian border to rise of crime in the Bedouin sector inside Israel (Credit: IDF)

The IDF stats show that in 2019, some 70 tons were smuggled through the Egyptian border, and there was an average of 11 bags in a smuggling event.

In 2020, the number dropped to 33 tons — less than half — and there was an average of 5.8 bags in a smuggling event.

In terms of cooperation, the source said that after many years, the responsibility to deal with the smuggling fell between the cracks, the brigade took an initiative and set up a mechanism that involves all the relevant parties.

“We set up a war room that assembled all of the bodies that need to be involved, like the police, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and special intelligence units. Now we know much more about smugglers on both sides of the fence,” he said. “This war room creates intelligence on a daily basis, and then we know where to focus, and where a smuggling event will take place.”

Another step that the brigade took was rearranging its forces along the border. In the populated areas, such as Kadesh Barne’a and Nitzana, and other places that were defined as “valuable assets,” the brigade located a permanent force with “high lethality.”

“In these places our forces have, among other things, infantry units and tanks,“ the source said. “We have them there so we will have an available and accessible force in case of an emergency. In the rest of the front, which is mostly unpopulated desert mountains, I work according to our precise intelligence.”

However, the success of the regional brigade does not come without a price: cutting down the drug cartels in the South also cuts down the income of hundreds of families, according to IDF estimations. In the absence of this income, which was steady for many years, Bedouin families in the South look for other ways to make revenue.

“We hit them on one side, so they’re looking for another,” the source said. “We see that loss of income being ‘compensated’ in other fields, like breaking into [IDF] bases and attempting to steal weapons and ammunition.

“Solving it requires a national operation,” he said. “We need the entire system to focus on investing in the Bedouin society… In education and in creating jobs. This [the smuggling] is a wide phenomenon and it requires a holistic, wider, and deeper solution, which also includes sovereignty in the South.”

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