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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Residents of the Wadi Araba desert in southern Israel have formed a volunteer patrol along the 200-kilometer stretch of the Israeli-Jordanian border which they believe is insufficiently defended and have asked the government to build a fence along the only border that does not yet feature a fence.

Eyal Blum, head of the Wadi Araba Regional Council said that there are "no [terrorist] tunnels here, simply because you can enter without needing one," reported the Times of Israel.

The patrol unit, named "Lotar Wadi Araba" (Lotar is the Israeli military's acronym for counterrorism), includes volunteers from "elite Israeli units Shaldag, Sayeret Matkal, Flotilla 13, the Paratroopers and Golani reconnaissance units," according to one volunteer.

Yoram Riati, a local farmer in one of the numerous small farming villages in the Wadi Araba told Israel's Channel 10 last week that he was "worried we’re going to wake up only after an attack, and I’d be happier if the state paid attention to what’s happening here before anyone dies."

Riati is a former paratrooper and Shin Bet officer who organized the new patrol group.

The Israeli Army denied that the border is insufficiently guarded, with one officer telling the Times of Israel that "the Israeli Army's defense package in the Wadi Araba is sufficient to the present threats," adding that the army caught seven Turks attempting to cross the border illegally near Yotvata in March.

The Israeli government was expected to allocate nearly one billion shekels (roughly $300 million) for the construction of the massive fence last year.

"Our first challenge is to protect our borders. Extremist Islamic forces are knocking on our doors in the north and south and we've set up obstacles against them, except for in one sector," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a conference at Tel Aviv University last June.

Israel has a fence on its southern border with Egypt, also near Eilat, that was erected in 2013 to keep out illegal African immigrants.

The Jewish state also has a border fence with the Gaza Strip and barriers on the frontiers with Syria and Lebanon, both countries it is technically at war with.

The huge steel fence that runs along the Syrian frontier through the Golan Heights was built after the Syrian civil war broke out, for fear of a spillover of fighting and an influx of refugees.

Israel also has a vast separation barrier that runs through the West Bank, which it began building during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which lasted from 2000-2005.

Cooperation between Israel and Jordan is growing as the Islamic State militant group continues makes additional gains in Iraq near the Jordan border, said a senior source in the Jordanian Embassy in Israel.

"There is a very good cooperation between us regarding the growing presence of the extremists in Iraq and Syria, but also on issues relating to other radical forces in the Middle East which have their sights set on Israel and Jordan," the diplomatic source said, without elaborating.

"The developments on the Jordanian-Iraqi border are still unclear, but the Jordanian army is already doing whatever it can to quell any threat from the area," the unnamed official said.