Senior Israeli security officials are warning of a dangerous vulnerability along the Jordan border, calling it a ticking time bomb and voicing fear that terrorists could attempt to replicate the October 7 massacre through Israel's longest and most exposed frontier, according to a report by Channel 12.
According to the report, security officials described the eastern border as the longest and most exposed in the country. Residents living near the frontier said they are certain a mass infiltration and massacre is only a matter of time, with no doubt among them that it will happen. "If not in my community, then in the one next to it," one resident said.
Dekel Yosef, a civilian security coordinator in the Arava region, put it bluntly: "I don't want to alarm anyone, but it's going to happen. The day will come, and it will arrive."
Officials cited in the report said an infiltration of this kind could occur on any given day, describing lawlessness along the border as rampant and noting that smuggling operations take place there on a regular, near-constant basis.
Meir Tzur, head of the Central Arava Regional Council, who has spent years working in the area on a near-daily basis, described what he called an incomprehensible failure reflected in the near total absence of military forces along the sector.
The warning echoes broader reporting in recent months on Israel's 475-kilometer border with Jordan, much of which remains without a physical barrier despite years of calls from residents and defense officials to build one. The IDF has in recent months begun infrastructure work along parts of the border, including trenches designed to block vehicle crossings, and the Defense Ministry has advanced a multibillion-shekel plan to build settlements, military outposts, and a technological barrier along the frontier, citing a reference scenario in which thousands of Iran-aligned militants, including Houthi fighters and Iraqi militia members, could attempt a coordinated mass breach.
