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Defensible Borders after October 7
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Dr. Dan Diker and Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - Since Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, invasion, Israel's security concept has undergone a fundamental shift, underscoring the essential importance of protecting all of Israel's borders by demilitarizing the territory beyond the border, creating broad buffer zones, enabling Israel's control and monitoring mechanisms, with strategic depth and maneuverability. Establishing a buffer zone and demilitarized belt inside Gaza under Israeli control, including along the border between Gaza and Egypt, is essential to establish minimal strategic depth to prevent a repetition of Oct. 7. Before the attack, the lack of strategic depth between Israeli communities and Gaza rendered them virtually defenseless against a mass terror assault. The porousness of the Gaza-Egyptian border reflected similar strategic and existential vulnerabilities. In the North, Israel has faced ongoing threats of Hizbullah infiltration through the Lebanon-Israel border and has established a buffer and demilitarized zone to prevent hostile direct fire at Israeli communities. On the Syrian-Israeli border, threats by radical Islamist militias to invade Israel require Israel to establish buffer and demilitarized zones beyond the border with Syria. Opposite Egypt, Israel should seek a full demilitarization of the Sinai approaches to Gaza, as set in the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty's military annex. In Judea and Samaria, securing and holding the Jordan Rift Valley and the Judea-Samaria hill ridge constitute unconditional security requirements for any prospective Palestinian entity there. Dan Diker is President of the Jerusalem Center. Yossi Kuperwasser heads the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.