Make (to use your example) does not do any sandboxing to ensure that the declared dependency graph is actually correct. This is the big innovation in Bazel (and Co).
Electric Make has had sandboxing since 2002, no conversion from your familiar make-based builds to a new shiny build tool required, and it can make on-the-fly corrections to execution order if that sandboxing reveals that incomplete dependency specifications caused something to run in the wrong order (relative to a strictly serial build).
"Sandboxing" in a build tool cannot be claimed as Bazel's innovation.
