Finish the fence

The Egyptian border has long been a porous problem.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
egyptian border 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
egyptian border 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
In a series of complex, coordinated terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Thursday, at least seven people were murdered and dozens were wounded. Seven terrorists were also killed.
The first attack occurred just after noon when men in a car shot at an Egged bus No. 392 that was traveling from Beersheba to Eilat. The bus had been heading south with tourists and soldiers, and its route took it along the Egyptian border.
Parts of Route 12 have long been considered so dangerous, due to trafficking in women, immigrants and narcotics from across the border, that civilians were required to carry licensed firearms when traveling on it.
The bus left Beersheba around 8:15 and made it to the Ein Netafim junction, near the spring by the same name about 12 km. north of Eilat, when it was ambushed by a car that was tailing it.
Several terrorists fired on passengers on the bus, while others attacked another bus and two vehicles with tourists.
Several mortar shells and anti-tank rounds were also fired from the Gaza Strip at soldiers conducting routine maintenance work on the security fence on the Israel-Egypt border.
While one terrorist is believed to have blown himself up, IDF troops killed the remaining gunmen in an ensuing exchange of fire.
Although the details are still murky, what is clear is that this was a very serious and sophisticated operation.
Terrorists in Gaza have for years been firing mortar shells into Israel and, before the disengagement of 2005, at Israeli settlements in the Strip.
In two incidents in 2010, terrorists operating from Sinai fired rockets toward Eilat, but they missed their targets and most of the projectiles struck in Jordan. In 2005, they fired rockets at a US warship anchored off the Jordanian port of Aqaba. In 2007, a Gazan suicide bomber infiltrated Israel from Egypt and blew himself up at an Eilat bakery, murdering three people.
It has long been understood that in the wake of the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, there was an increased risk of terrorists infiltrating Sinai to attack Israeli tourists or using Sinai as a base to attack Israel.
Terrorism struck Sinai in 2004, 2005 and 2006 in bombings that targeted Taba, Sharm e-Sheikh and Dahab. In addition, the families of 11 Arab Israelis who died in a bus in Sinai in 2006 argue that the crash may have been caused deliberately.
The most recent manifestation of the Sinai threat has been a series of attacks on the natural gas pipeline that links Egypt and Israel.
These attacks seem to have been a direct casualty of the weakening of Egypt’s state power with the recent fall of Hosni Mubarak, while reflecting the chaos in the Nile Valley and the need for the army to consolidate its power.
However, under the 1979 peace treaty, Sinai has remained demilitarized, leaving Egypt weak in the face of the infiltration of terrorists from Gaza. The police are often at the mercy of the various Beduin tribes as well, who run huge smuggling networks and even small “prison” camps where African migrants are extorted, reaping great profits for the Beduin.
Clashes between Beduin, police and other officers of the state occur regularly.
In the wake of the collapse of law enforcement in Sinai in July and early August, the Egyptian government first tried to hire local Beduin to enforce order on themselves, which was like hiring the mafia to police other mafias.
Then, on August 15, the Egyptian Army sent around 1,000 soldiers to patrol northern Sinai. But a regiment is a drop in the ocean, and such a small force is easily swallowed up by the 60,000 square kilometers of uninhabited desert and mountains that make up the Sinai Peninsula.
An initial investigation indicated that terrorists on Thursday crossed the border separating Gaza from Egypt and managed to infiltrate Israeli territory from Egyptian-controlled Sinai.
Thursday’s attacks recall the infamous Scorpions Pass massacre of 1954, in which 11 Israelis were murdered while traveling on a bus from Eilat.
Israel was never able to identify the killers. At least this time it seems like the terrorists have been killed, and that investigators will soon put together a clearer picture of who they were and how they operated.
The Egyptian border has long been a porous problem, which is why the government decided last year to build a security fence there.
What is clear is that construction of the fence along the 240-kilometer border must now be expedited because Israel cannot tolerate similar attacks in the future.
The government set aside an estimated NIS 1 billion to build the fence in January 2010, and it was due to be completed by the end of 2012.
But so far, less than 50 kilometers of the fence has been erected. The work must now be finished.