Israel’s getting a new wall, this one underground

KFAR SIRKIN, Israel — Israel is building another wall to protect itself from its enemies. But rather than a major eyesore, much of this one will be invisible.

In the coming months, military officials say, the army will be accelerating construction of a subterranean barrier around the Gaza Strip, designed to cut off tunnels running beneath the border into Israel like the ones Hamas militants used to ambush Israeli military posts during the summerlong war of 2014.

Challenged by hostile forces on most of its fronts, Israel is already pretty much walled in. Aboveground fences and sections of concrete wall run along and through parts of the West Bank, a legacy of Palestinian suicide bombings during the second intifada. Formidable steel fences also stretch along the northern frontiers with Lebanon and Syria, the southern borders with Jordan and the Egyptian Sinai, and around Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave controlled by Hamas, the Islamic militant group, for the last decade.

Israeli military officials are being understandably cagey about how the new underground barrier will work, other than to say it will also include an aboveground section and incorporate layers of advanced technological systems. The cost is expected to be about 4 billion shekels (more than $1 billion), according to Israeli news reports.

Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, commander of the military’s Southern Command, told reporters this week that it would be completed within about two years.

In the meantime, the Israeli military is working on trying to ensure that the project does not prompt the next war.

Military commanders insist that the wall is meant only to defend Israelis, and emphasize that it will be built in Israeli territory, in the hope of removing any justification for Hamas to attack the construction teams and set off another round of fighting.

“We see that Hamas is deterred and restrained, and is reining in others,” Zamir told reporters Thursday. But, he added, “Our intelligence shows without any doubt that Hamas is building its infrastructure for the next round of fighting in the civilian arena.”