By: Shirlee Finn
Yes another wall and where, oh where, are the Israel haters?
Until a week ago I was under the impression at the last count there were more than 45 walls separating countries and territories. Now it seems there are more being built elsewhere in Europe.
In Hungary the government is rushing to complete a 109-mile-long barbed wire border fence along its southern frontier with Serbia.
The Hungarian government hopes this new fence will stem the flow of migrants and refugees traveling through Hungary in what has been referred to as the West Balkans route. In 2015, Hungary often serves as an entry point to the European Union and border control-free travel in the Schengen area for those crossing from Greece and the Balkans.
In the immediate future, however, the fence may not have the desired effect. News of its construction has led refugees to race across the border into Hungary.
Earlier this year, Bulgaria announced a plan for a border fence that will eventually span 100 miles of its border with southern neighbour Turkey.
Bulgaria’s wall is not far from a wall built by Greece in 2012. This wall, constructed with the intent of keeping out migrants and refugees crossing from Turkey, pales in comparison to the more recent walls. It covers just 6.5 mile of land border with Turkey (barriers were put up along the Evros river as well) and failed to stop the growing number of migrants who reached Greece by boat.
In the French town of Calais, the British government recently spent $10 million to erect improved fencing around the Channel Tunnel, a train link between France and Britain which has recently attracted relatively large numbers of migrants. Pascal Aerts, who leads the police assigned to the migrants in France, told the BBC that the fences would only push the problem elsewhere, most likely to ports in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Barriers around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Mellila in Morocco, significantly expanded upon in 2005, have done little to stem Europe’s overall migrant issues.
The walls coming up in Europe aren’t all about migrants and refugees.
In Ukraine, an enormous, $250 million plan to seal up the 1,200-mile-long border with Russia is born of fear of Moscow’s destabilizing influence. Estonia has also pledged to build a fence along almost 70 miles of its border with Russia.
In January this year it was announced that Saudi Arabia was building a 600-Mile (965 klms) ‘Great Wall’ to shield itself From ISIS? Not a peep from anywhere. This is to add to their wall along part of its 1,800 kilometre border with Yemen.
It is a structure made of pipeline three metres (10 ft) high, filled with concrete and supported on posts and fitted with electronic detection equipment.
The border fence cuts through mountains, deserts and sea borders provide visibility and operational awareness to Saudi Border Guard by the use of cutting-edge technology, which includes installation of sophisticated radar systems along the extensive border.
It is designed to stop Al Qaeda attacks.
Saudi Arabia also has a 550-mile ( 885 kilometres) high-tech fence to seal off its troubled northern neighbour, Iraq.
It is a barrier equipped with ultraviolet night-vision cameras, buried sensor cables, thousands of miles of barbed wire, snakes across the vast and remote desert frontier between the countries.
The jihadists were launching an assault on the new, highest-profile effort by Saudi Arabia to insulate itself from the chaos engulfing its neighbours.
Much of the area on the Iraqi side is now controlled by Isil, which regards the ultimate capture of Saudi Arabia, home to the “Two Holy Mosques” of Mecca and Medina, as a key goal.
The proposal had been discussed since 2006, at the height of the Iraqi civil war, but work began in September last year after Isil’s charge through much of the west and north of the country gave it a substantial land border with the Kingdom to the south.
The border zone now includes five layers of fencing with watch towers, night-vision cameras, and radar cameras.
In July Turkey revealed it has plans to build concrete wall along its a 560-mile border with Syria to fend off the threat of ISIS attacks.
The estimated cost is a mere $1.5billion, which apparently will include airships to fly several hundred metres high to monitor the frontier.
It also plans to put in two fences separated by a military patrol road at the border, complete with observation towers and moats at some locations.
Again not a peep from the Israel haters… but then Israel it seems is the only country to build an apartheid wall.
This article originally appeared on Jews Down Under.
