Politics
20:13, 11-Aug-2017
Israel warns Hamas not to foil its anti-tunnel Gaza wall
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Israel on Thursday warned Gaza's Hamas rulers not to try to halt its construction of a border wall designed to stop tunnels being dug between the two sides.
Israel said it had mapped militant emplacements hidden under civilian sites in the Palestinian enclave that may be attacked in any new war.
The Israeli warning followed a rocket launch on Tuesday which caused no damage in Israel, who then responded with an air strike on a Hamas facility that medics said wounded seven people.
Hamas has accused Israel of belligerence. In 2016, Israel went public with a sensor-equipped underground wall being planted on its side of the border, a counter-measure developed after Hamas fighters used tunnels to blindside its troops during the last Gaza war in 2014.
Israeli media published new disclosures by the military on Thursday about the project which would cost 1.1 billion US dollars and would allegedly be completed within two years under an accelerated schedule.
Israel has described it as a territorial counterpart to its Iron Dome short-range rocket interceptor, capable of blunting Hamas's limited means of challenging its superior armed forces.
A Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called the Israeli statements "lies and fabrications that aim to damage the image of the Palestinian resistance and justify the mass killing of thousands of Palestinians civilians”.
Israeli media said on Thursday that the military also planned to build an underwater barrier in the Mediterranean to prevent infiltration from Gaza by sea.
(With inputs from Reuters)