JERUSALEM: Israel decided on Wednesday to start building a reinforced barrier along parts of its porous border with Egypt in a bid to prevent infiltration attempts by Palestinian militants, an official told AFP.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense and foreign ministers decided on the move after a three-hour meeting at the premier’s office, a senior government official told AFP.
“Israel will soon begin constructing two sections of the fence following a plan presented at the meeting by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The first section will be near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat and the second near the area of Nitzana in the centre of the 250 km-desert border, he said.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev declined to comment on the meeting.
The encounter, which also included senior security officials, came a day after Hamas claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly suicide bombing in Israel, the first such attack in a year.
A 73-year-old woman was killed in the bombing in Dimona.
The attack came after a near two-week border breach between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, raising fears in Israel that Hamas militants were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who poured into the Sinai when the border was open.
Hamas said on Tuesday that two of its members from the occupied West Bank had carried out the bombing, the first time that it claimed responsibility for a suicide blast inside Israel in three and a half years.
At Wednesday’s meeting security officials presented intelligence reports indicating that dozens of Palestinian insurgents from the Gaza Strip had scattered across the Sinai desert after militants blew open the border on January 23, the official said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recommended during the meeting that Israel support Egypt’s request to double its forces along its border with Gaza from the current 750 to 1,500, an official in her ministry told AFP.
The meeting came a day after Israel pounded Hamas positions in its Gaza Strip bastion, killing nine Palestinians as the Islamist movement said it was behind the suicide bombing in Dimona in Israel’s Negev desert.
The idea of building a reinforced barrier along the Egyptian border was first raised in Israel several years ago, but was eventually abandoned because of the high cost.
A defense ministry spokesman told AFP that a reinforced border fence could cost at least 500 million dollars and take up to two years to construct.
