Israel quietly spending over $1b on rebuilding the Gaza border fence that failed on October 7
Hagai Amit reports in Haaretz on 26 October 2026:
Israel is quietly rebuilding a barrier separating it from the Gaza Strip and has recently completed part of its northern section, information and footage obtained by Haaretz show.
Over the past several months, Israel has completed approximately 3 km (about 2 miles) of the fence – codenamed Hourglass – near the border community of Zikim. The government has not made any public announcement on the matter.
The fence has been built above ground, running parallel to the concrete wall along the Gaza border and an existing, simpler wire fence equipped with an alert system. The new fence is fitted with sensors and radar systems that give it more advanced capabilities.
The total cost of the Hourglass barrier was previously estimated at 3.5 billion shekels ($1.14 billion), of which approximately half a billion shekels was allocated to the above-ground fence. The investment is far from an obvious choice, given that IDF soldiers are stationed nearby along the Yellow Line in the IDF-occupied part of the Gaza Strip, and that the same type of fence failed on October 7.
Speaking to Haaretz-TheMarker, a government official involved in the matter criticized the cost of the project, saying it is “yet another example of money being wasted.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “wants to establish settlements in the territory beyond this fence. Our enemy isn’t even there right now, and there’s another fence of ours just a few hundred meters away,” he said, referring to the barriers along the Yellow Line. “Someone decided that the security infrastructure needed to be reinforced, and they went ahead with it, even though we saw how much this Hourglass fence was worth on October 7.”
The reconstruction of the Hourglass fence, which was breached at some 120 locations on October 7, 2023, is not the only example of Israeli security bodies’ infrastructure work that has no clear security strategy.
Haaretz-TheMarker has learned that engineering work carried out along the borders under the IDF’s Northern Command over the past year was estimated to have cost 3 billion shekels. The work included constructing a barrier along the Syrian border, demolition work and maintenance of the fence along the Lebanese border, and the destruction of infrastructure and homes in villages associated with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.Throughout the project, dozens of crews operated along the northern border every day, each using three or four pieces of heavy machinery.
These billions of shekels are being spent despite a fundamental principle of IDF military doctrine, reinforced by the events of October 7, that “the front line will always be breached.” The government has also been spending this money despite Israeli military forces being stationed in IDF-occupied buffer zones in both Syria and Lebanon, which it has no intention of withdrawing from.
Adding the cost of the eastern border barrier with Jordan, construction of which began a year ago (5.5 billion shekels), brings Israel’s expected investment in border infrastructure to some 10 billion shekels ($3.25 billion), without any long-term strategic planning on the issue.
Since the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has abandoned its strategy of keeping its wars short and has stockpiled enough ammunition for a war lasting years. Meanwhile, the government has shown no willingness to establish a state commission of inquiry into the attacks, the findings of which could help Israel formulate a new security doctrine.
Israel has been moving to make the Israel Navy and Israel Air Force capable of confronting Iran and Turkey simultaneously, while seeking to maintain these capabilities assuming Israel cannot rely on its alliance with the United States.
At the same time, the military maintains ground forces capable of operating at any given moment in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon, stationing troops in IDF-occupied security zones in Gaza and along the northern border, while constructing barriers in those areas.
Responding to a request for comment, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said, “the cost of engineering work to destroy terrorist infrastructure, including underground infrastructure, is estimated at hundreds of millions of shekels a year,” adding that its forces “are working continuously to dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and ensure that anything they uncover is destroyed.”
The IDF added that barriers “are a significant component of border defenses. Their purpose is to delay the enemy, and they are adapted to the unique conditions in each sector. The barriers do not stand alone but form part of a broader defensive system.”
The military said it “has invested heavily in mobility, various intelligence-gathering capabilities, security infrastructure in communities and additional defensive measures as part of the lessons learned from the events of October 7,” adding that “defensive units and combat forces are deployed across all sectors, with a large proportion stationed on both sides of the border to protect residents.”
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