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Military says pair stopped in buffer zone before they can enter Gaza territory, motive for attempt to enter beleaguered Strip unclear.
he Israel Defense Forces detained two Israeli civilians who attempted to cross into the Gaza Strip overnight, the military said Friday morning.
The pair’s motive was not immediately clear.
According to the IDF, soldiers monitoring surveillance cameras spotted the two crossing a gate on the Gaza border security barrier, and entering a buffer zone in Israeli territory.
Troops dispatched to the scene detained the pair and brought them back through the fence.
The IDF’s fence is built several dozen meters inside Israeli territory, and the military said the two Israelis never entered Gaza itself.
“Approaching the barrier zone is dangerous and harms the activity of security forces in the area,” the IDF added.
While the buffer zone is technically on Israeli soil, those inside it have only to cross a partially disused barbed wire barrier to reach inside Gaza. The buffer is bounded by a larger high-tech fence on the Israeli side that is often mistaken for the actual frontier.
Israeli civilians have on several occasions attempted to enter Gaza since war broke out between Israel and the Hamas terror group in the Strip in October.
In February, an Israeli civilian entered Gaza from a spot near Kibbutz Be’eri and later returned of his own accord. He was detained afterward.
In January, two young Israeli children managed to slip under the Gaza border fence, heading toward the Strip while carrying an Israeli flag. The IDF said the two children crawled under the fence but did not cross into Gaza territory.
Last month, a number of relatives of hostages being held in Gaza made a show of sprinting toward the Strip during a protest near the border designed to attempt to get messages to their loved ones. Despite initial reports, the group remained well inside Israel and did not cross the border fence.
Pro-settlement activists have also attempted to enter Gaza in a bid to reclaim communities evacuated by Israel in 2005. In February, a far-right group attempted to set up civilian housing inside the buffer zone but were swiftly removed.
Palestinians are generally prohibited from reaching areas near the Gazan side of the border, with the army working to widen the buffer zone running along the border deeper into Gaza.
War erupted on October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Israel responded to the attack with a military campaign whose stated goals were the destruction of Hamas, the return of the hostages, and the prevention of any future security threat from the enclave.
THE TIMES OF ISRAEL