Israel has announced plans to build a “security wall” along its border with the blockaded Gaza Strip, Israeli state radio reported late Wednesday.
According to the broadcaster, the Israeli army plans to erect the 65-kilometer-long barrier with the ostensible aim of preventing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from “infiltrating” Jewish settlements located on the Israeli side of the border.
The move comes amid a spate of recent violence that began last month when the Israeli authorities closed off East Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, Islam’s third-holiest site, to Muslim men under 50, while allowing groups of extremist Jewish settlers to enter the site in large numbers.
In a wave of subsequent violence that remains ongoing, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces — 21 in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and 11 in the blockaded Gaza Strip — this month alone.
Over the same period, some 1,700 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli gunfire, according to figures released by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
