Ed Rettig, Director, AJC Jerusalem

August 23, 2011

As I began to write this piece on Friday morning, Israeli radio broadcasted instructions to families in Ashdod and the South on how to prepare their “safe rooms,” the structurally reinforced, airtight bedrooms built into all Israeli construction since the first Gulf War. Between the news updates, the radio played what my wife sardonically calls “disaster music”: soft, melodic, calming, popular Hebrew tunes.

That music has been playing since Thursday’s coordinated terror assault on Southern Israel by a unit of the Palestinian “Popular Resistance Committees” that killed eight Israelis and wounded 30. Most were civilians in clearly marked civilian vehicles. Israeli aircraft then attacked the PRC headquarters in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, killing its military commander and other fighters. Palestinian sources claim that civilians were also among the dead. Subsequently over one hundred missiles were launched from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilian targets, causing casualties. As of Sunday, the opposition parties in Israel were urging a stronger response, but the Israeli government carefully calibrated its actions. Sources tell AJC that it is doubtful that a land operation along the lines of Operation Cast Lead is in the offing. There is some talk of renewing the ceasefire. At any event, as of this writing the incident is not yet over.

Experts describe the PRC as one of the more extreme Palestinian groups. Composed largely of members of the PA security forces who object to peace moves with Israel, it works very closely with Hamas and is said to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. In 2003, PRC attacked a U.S. diplomat who was visiting Gaza to encourage Palestinians to apply for Fulbright scholarships, killing three American security officers. PRC notoriety increased when it perpetrated the 2004 murder of a pregnant Israeli woman and her three young children. PRC has also been implicated, together with Hamas, in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.

From a purely technical standpoint, the latest terror attack was an impressive achievement. According to Israeli sources, an armed group of between ten and twenty men exited Gaza through the Rafah crossing or the smuggling tunnels. They then traversed about two hundred kilometers of Egyptian territory, passing beneath an Egyptian military installation and crossing into Israel fifteen kilometers north of Eilat. The IDF believes that one of their aims was to kidnap another Israeli soldier. In this they failed. Nevertheless, a Gaza-based terror group operating far from its home used Iraq-style roadside bombs and suicide bombers to kill numerous Israeli civilians and security personnel.

Once the incident is over and the time arrives to draw lessons, several questions will engage the Israeli public.

First the ministries responsible for Israeli security, particularly the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Security, will have to explain why, despite an intelligence warning a couple of weeks earlier, the army and the police failed to prevent the attack. Perhaps this will lead to changes in the way security is guaranteed in the South.

Second, the Ministry of Defense will have to explain why a security barrier was missing along the Egyptian border. The spot where the incursion from Sinai into Israel took place was supposed to have a security barrier, but it is only 10 percent complete. Bureaucratic complications seem to be holding up the pace of construction, and these will have to be reviewed in light of what happened.

Third, the incident further complicates Israeli relations with Egypt. Over the weekend rumors flew about whether Egypt would withdraw its ambassador from Israel to protest Israeli troops killing Egyptian personnel in the course of the battle. While a statement to that effect appeared on an Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs web site, it was later withdrawn. The Egyptian ambassador showed up for work in Tel Aviv on yesterday as usual. However, outraged crowds demonstrated raucously outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo and one enterprising young man climbed the building from the outside and removed the Israeli flag from the roof. The factual basis of the claim that Israel killed Egyptian soldiers is going to be investigated jointly by an Israeli and an Egyptian team and Israeli Minister of Defense Barak expressed Israel’s regret at the deaths while at the same time he did not take responsibility for them. IDF commanders speak of close coordination with their Egyptian counterparts, raising the possibility that Egyptian talk of diplomatic retaliation may have more to do with political pressures in Cairo than with developments on the frontier with Israel.

On another level, Israel must decide how to deal with the disappearance of effective Egyptian control over Sinai. After all, the strategic heart of the Egypt-Israel peace process is the use of Sinai as the safe buffer zone between the two states. With the collapse of the Mubarak regime, Egypt’s internal security agency was dismantled; its institutional replacement is not yet fully operational. One result has been the central government’s loss of effective control over large parts of Sinai.

Acutely aware of the problem, not least because their own security installations suffered violent attack not to mention the repeated vandalism conducted against the natural gas pipelines to Jordan and Israel, the Egyptians have launched a multi-pronged effort to regain control of the peninsula. Politically, this involves employing Bedouin to protect the natural gas pipelines (an arrangement one Israeli source describes as “protection money, pure and simple”), and offering other benefits to Sinai Bedouin such as expanded representation in the new Egyptian parliament. Militarily, patrols are being beefed up in Sinai to prevent human trafficking and smuggling, especially of drugs, that provide the economic base and the logistical infrastructure to terror groups. Recognizing the challenge, Israel agreed to a request from the Egyptians to allow some two thousand additional troops into Sinai. The reinforced military/political effort in Sinai is vital for the future of the peace accord between Israel and the Republic of Egypt. Much hinges on the ability of the Egyptians to regain effective control of their own territory.

If the past is any guide, the Israelis will do whatever is necessary to protect their population. While they did cancel the league soccer games scheduled for the weekend in the Southern region so as to prevent crowds that could be targeted by missiles from Gaza, life goes on. The mayor of Eilat announced that the famous Jazz Festival scheduled for Sunday would take place as planned. Israeli radio reports that Israeli vacationers are not canceling their reservations in Eilat hotels. Israeli resilience in the face of terror has been a major strategic asset over the last two decades. Despite the savagery of this terror attack, determination and grit—perhaps helped along by “disaster music”—will continue to play a critical role in neutralizing the military effect of terror.

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