Israel is carrying out a policy of “good fences make good neighbors” and will build a security fence along the Jordanian border, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday.

“When the security barrier along the Egyptian border is finished, one will be built along the border with Jordan,” the Prime Minister said at the weekly Cabinet meeting. The border on the south will stretch 240 kilometers (nearly 150 miles) and is scheduled to be completed before the end of 2012, at a cost of $360 million.

Although Prime Minister Netanyahu said in September that “Israel’s border with Egypt is a border of peace,” infiltrators, smugglers and terrorists have freely crossed into Israeli territory. Eight people were killed in a multi-pronged terrorists attack northwest of Eilat several months ago.

Israel is worried that the closure of the southern border will encourage more infiltrations from Jordan, which can be reached from the south via Egypt.

“I’d define the border these days as one of tense peace … We’ve always known that radical Islamist elements are infiltrating into Sinai,” an Eilat-area counter-terrorism expert told Chinese news agency Xinhua.

“The fence is an important tool that will enable us and other forces to control occurrences on the border with greater effectiveness,” the official said. he added that the IDF must deploy troops along the borders to make sure the fence won’t become porous.