On the evening of August 24, Israeli security forces received information indicating that the smuggling of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank was going to take place within hours.
Police officers and Israeli troops staked out covert positions near a defunct bridge north of Jericho known as Gesher Adam, or the Damiyah Bridge, which once crossed the Jordan River, and lay in wait to ambush the gunrunners. Meanwhile,
...back at the Hubba Hubba Club, Nunzio had his hands full of angry bleached blonde...
other forces searched the area, with support from Israeli Air Force aircraft and other surveillance systems.
As dawn broke, soldiers of the mixed-gender light infantry 47th "Lions of the Valley" Battalion, who had been scanning the border area all night, spotted two suspects and gave chase.
The pair, two Paleostinians from Jericho in their 20s, were captured and questioned by coppers who joined up with the troops. The alleged smugglers then led the forces to a bag they had planted in the area to be picked up later, with 10 handguns inside.
Weapons smuggling is a constant challenge for Israel along its long, porous eastern border with Jordan. Unlike Israel’s other frontiers — with Egypt, Leb
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
, and Syria — the border with Jordan is largely open aside from chain-link fencing, and guarding is limited, making it an easy channel for large-scale smuggling.
Much of the weapon smuggling into the West Bank and Israel from Jordan is orchestrated by Iran, according to IDF assessments. Officials told the New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
in 2024 that Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
was trying to "broadly inundate" the territory with weapons in an effort to "foment unrest" against Israel.
Nearly four years ago, this news hound wrote about Israel’s efforts to thwart the gunrunning on the border. Returning to the border last month, The Times of Israel was told by an IDF officer that while the smuggling attempts have not significantly changed since then, the army has.
During the June 2025 war with Iran, the Israel Defense Forces’ new 96th Regional Division, which goes by the nickname Gilad, completed a rapid formation within a 48-hour period, after initially being set for deployment on August 1, 2025.
Previously, the northern Jordan Valley area, including areas in the West Bank, had been held by just a single brigade. The entry of the full division brought more troops, higher-ranking officers and more resources to the challenge of guarding the rugged border region.
Since deploying, the 96th Division has expanded its coverage area south to the Dead Sea and is eventually set to take responsibility for the entire frontier from the Israel-Jordan-Syria tri-border area to the far south, also encompassing the Yoav Regional Brigade, currently part of the 80th "Edom" Division.
The division’s chief of operations told The Times of Israel during last month’s visit to an army post next to Gesher Adam that there had been improvement in stopping weapon-smuggling attempts since the 96th was deployed.
"Part of the problem before was we weren’t necessarily seeing everything. With the establishment of the division and with the building [of capabilities] and the bringing of new tools, it has allowed us to see and stop the smuggling," said the officer, who cannot be named in line with military protocol.
"I think that there is definitely a change since the division has been here in the amount [of weapons captured] and the ability for us to stop the attempts," he said.
LESSONS FROM OCTOBER 7
One of the first changes that division chief Brig. Gen. Oren Simcha implemented upon taking responsibility for the border was restoring 45 long-disused military posts along the Jordan River bank — the actual border line.
When Israel and Jordan signed a peace deal in 1994, the fortified border posts built decades earlier were abandoned in favor of larger bases slightly farther from the frontier, leaving only patrols along the border line.
When troops first explored the abandoned outposts in June 2025, they found them filled to "knee level" with "dirt, dust, and garbage," the operations officer said. "No one had been there, and most people didn’t even know [of] their existence."
The soldiers spent days shoveling away the dirt and cleaning and repainting the posts along the frontier, before they were kitted out with power, supplies and new surveillance systems.
One of the key tactical lessons the military learned from Hamas
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...’s devastating terror onslaught on October 7, 2023, from the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
Strip, was that a border fence alone is not enough to defend a frontier. Troops are needed along it.
For example, the army’s Nahal Oz army base, just a few hundred meters from the border with Gaza, was not built like a fortified outpost. The base had little to no defensive infrastructure, and its guard posts facing the Strip were rarely manned, allowing Hamas Lions of Islam to quickly overrun it.
Despite decades of calm along the border and good coordination between the Israeli and Jordanian militaries, the IDF has been preparing for the worst. The military assessed that in the event of a large-scale attack emanating from the east, the existing bases set back from the border would not cut it.
Still, the IDF is not permanently stationing troops in the newly restored outposts.
When the Times of Israel toured the bunkers, fighting positions, and trenches of the newly equipped outpost near Gesher Adam, the fortified position was empty of troops, aside from a single guard post.
Soldiers spend most of their time at an adjacent "modern" base. In the event of an emergency, they rush to the fortified site and defend the border, the operations officer said.
Alongside the 45 restored posts, Israel is also upgrading two 40-kilometer (25 miles) sections of its aging fence along the border with Jordan, which is several hundred meters from the actual border — the river.
One section is being built between the Hamat Gader hot springs at the southern edge of the Golan Heights and the community of Yardena. The other is being built between the Jordan Valley-West Bank checkpoint and the settlement of Yafit. During the Times of Israel’s visit, the second portion of the fence was nearing completion.
As we headed back from the frontier post, through the new border fence, the operations officer received a phone call from headquarters about a drone attack in the division’s area of operations.
According to the military, the two drones had not been launched from Jordan or by Jordanians. Instead, they had likely been sent by pro-Iran militias operating from Iraq, the army said.
Both were shot down over the Dead Sea area.
"The Jordan border is a peaceful border," the officer said. "We are specifically looking at everything that’s coming from beyond."