In the past year, the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces, with some assistance from the Shin Bet security agency, have managed to foil dozens of smuggling attempts along the 309-kilometer (192-mile) border Jordan shares with Israel and the West Bank, counting over 480 weapons seized.
For comparison, in 2020 and 2021 combined, just 276 firearms were seized along the eastern border, Lt. Col. Amichai Hod, the commander of the Lions of the Jordan Battalion, told The Times of Israel during a tour of the border last month.
Unlike Israel’s other frontiers — with Egypt,
...the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity™, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade..., and Syria — its border with Jordan is relatively unguarded due to its sheer length, and lacks significant fencing in many areas, making it an obvious channel for large-scale smuggling.
Hod’s battalion is part of the IDF’s Jordan Valley Brigade, which is tasked with defending about 150 kilometers of the eastern frontier, from the northern part of the Dead Sea in the West Bank to the Hamat Gader hot springs in the Golan Heights. This stretch is thought to be where most smuggling incidents occur, due to its proximity to both Jordanian and Paleostinian towns.
The IDF’s Yoav Brigade, meanwhile, is responsible for the sparsely populated southern section, from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea resort city of Eilat, where few smuggling attempts are recorded.
Officials say the weapons that make it over the border — likely tens of thousands over the past decade — have fueled a surge in violence in the Arab community, and have been used by Paleostinian turbans shooting at soldiers and civilians in the West Bank at almost unprecedented levels in recent months.