A defense and security nightmare played out in southern Israel on Thursday, at the high price of eight dead and 31 wounded. The deadly attack by a coordinated group of terrorists who entered the Sinai peninsula via Gaza's smuggling tunnels began around noon. Reports put the number of terrorists at more than 20, all members of the Popular Resistance Committee, a coalition of armed Palestinian factions. Five terrorists were killed by the IDF, and Egyptian soldiers reportedly killed another two. The remaining terrorists fled the scene after Israeli forces returned fire. Warnings were everywhere that this attack was looming. Not only did the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) provide an accurate prediction of the specific type of attack that took place, but a more generic advisory has long been in place that the tunnels running from Gaza to Sinai, generally used for smuggling people and weapons across the Palestinian-Egyptian border, could be used for terror purposes. The local Bedouin population is said to help the smugglers through the tunnels, into Sinai, and from Sinai into Israeli territory, and this was exactly the route the terrorists used. Dozens of attacks along the same route have been thwarted in the past. Israeli citizens are generally unaware of the "silent war" being waged along the harsh terrain of the route, which traverses hundreds of kilometers without any physical border fence. Some of the attempted attacks occurred inside Israeli territory and were foiled by ISA warnings. Until yesterday, they always ended with minimal harm to Israeli security forces. This illusion of quiet along the route allowed Israel to take its time in constructing a fence along its southern border. Despite the fact that 6,551 known infiltrators stole into Israel from Egypt, and despite the understanding that the route, primarily used to smuggle drugs, prostitutes, illegal aliens and weapons could quickly become a terrorist route for staging attacks on Israel, no action was taken to properly secure the border. Only after Thursday's deadly attack did the Defense Ministry finally announce that they would expedite construction of the fence. Although some of the ministry's excuses were justified, such as lack of support from the Finance Ministry, the bottom line is that the deadly attack on Thursday proved that no excuse is good enough. The border chaos has been exacerbated by regime change in Egypt. Since the exit of Hosni Mubarak, the Sinai Peninsula has become a ghost town. Today, the government in Cairo is preoccupied with preserving the integrity of the Egyptian mainland, and the Sinai has been left to descend into anarchy. At first it was the Bedouins who took advantage of the situation by sabotaging the pipeline delivering natural gas to both Israel and Jordan. Bedouins attacked different points of the pipeline in a bid to extort the Egyptian government and natural gas suppliers. Then Hamas and other terrorist groups began transferring stockpiles of weapons, as well as setting up command centers and factories, fully aware of the fact that, unlike Gaza, the Sinai is safe from Israeli retaliatory attacks. The first wake-up call came last year when rockets from the Sinai hit Eilat. The second came when weapon transfers between Gaza and Sinai surged. Thursday's attack was the nail in the coffin, so to speak, of the illusive quiet along the southern border. The attack occurred near an Egyptian outpost, in broad daylight, 50 meters from Egyptian soldiers who simply stood by and watched without lifting a finger, highlighting Israel's reliance on intelligence to thwart such attacks. Intelligence reports in the days leading up to the attack warned our security officials that something terrible was looming. The ISA distributed warning reports, which should have been enough for security forces to thwart it, explicitly stating that Popular Resistance Committee terrorists left Gaza with the intention to attack Israel and possibly abduct soldiers. On the basis of these reports, a police counter-terror unit moved to the south to coordinate operations with ISA officers. In addition, the IDF sent the Golani Brigade's Orev (Raven) Company to the south. On Thursday, an Orev Unit soldier was killed in the attack. Highway 12 was not closed The forces sent to the south, together with the routine security detail of IDF's Battalion 80, should have been sufficient to deter the attack. The police's Unit for Counter-Terror Warfare (SWAT) was deployed along the border all night on Wednesday, but on Thursday morning they were ordered back to their bases. The assessment was that the terrorists would not attack in broad daylight, right near an Egyptian military outpost, and not at the particular point at which they were deployed. That is why the IDF left Highway 12, a road that snakes through the far south of Israel, open to civilian travel, ultimately putting Israelis directly in harm's way. Commanders in Battalion 80 and the Southern Command now find themselves facing tough questions about their decisions leading up to the attack. Some tried to downplay the ISA warnings Wednesday, but they were solid. At the end of the day, it was the failure to heed the warnings and a lack of serious operational maneuvering that allowed the attack to happen. Although we need to wait for the results of the investigations, it is reasonable to assume the chief of staff will take some action at the Southern Command level to express his disappointment in the way the event was handled. Meanwhile, Israel faced another front after Thursday's attack -- Gaza itself. The IDF responded to the attack by immediately targeting Popular Resistance Committee leadership. The Air Force struck a building in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, where PRC higher-ups were holding a meeting, killing six people, including the PRC senior commander Kamal Abu Abed al-Nairab. Israel's retaliation, however, begs the question of why these terrorists were alive in the first place. Why did we wait to kill them until after they carried out their murderous plan? Similarly, why does the government disapprove of special tactical operations that may change the course of the talks to free abducted soldier Gilad Shalit- Arms continue to flow into Gaza Palestinian terrorists responded to Israel's air strikes overnight Thursday and Friday morning by firing a barrage of rockets into Israel. In Ashdod, a Grad rocket fell on a yeshiva, wounding at least ten people, two seriously. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a radical Islamic group affiliated with al-Qaida, took responsibility. IDF forces are now bracing themselves for attempts by PRC terrorists to avenge the deaths of their leaders. In preparation, an additional Iron Dome anti-rocket system was deployed in the south near Beersheba (one was already deployed near Ashkelon a few days ago) and Gazans were warned that the IDF would respond swiftly and harshly to any rocket fire on Israel. Israel is hoping that Hamas will be deterred from further violence, and will rein in rogue terrorist groups in the areas it controls. But even if the current round of violence ends here, Israel should be concerned about the situation in the Sinai, which has the potential to devolve into total chaos. Weapons continue to flow into the Gaza Strip, lending violent groups the freedom to decide when and where their next attack on Israel will be. As the Palestinian bid for statehood in the U.N. General Assembly this September creeps up on us, and Israel's legitimacy continues to be questioned, the IDF's operational scope continues to shrink. This was further highlighted by Thursday's attack, and Israel's response was far from providing a comprehensive solution.
