This year, the travel advisories are sounding a far more urgent and insistent note.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFSinai tourists 224.88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Israel's Counter-Terrorism Bureau has the unenviable task of warning travelers away from destinations considered particularly dangerous by intelligence analysts.
Assessments are never sure-fire forecasts, though they are too often understood as such. An inevitable consequence is that the bureau is often derided as crying wolf. Some eager holiday-makers may perceive its persistent admonitions as killjoy annoyances.
Perhaps this is because we Israelis have learned to live perilously. We hear more warnings than our counterparts abroad and tend to take them in stride. This laid-back attitude can, however, prove unfortunate for the Israelis who throw caution to the winds, and for the security experts who strive to keep them safe.
With the approach of the extended High Holy Day season, as many Israelis gear up for vacations and to visit family, the issue usually intensifies. And this year, the travel advisories are sounding a far more urgent and insistent note.
The bureau is convinced that Hizbullah is plotting assiduously to kidnap Israelis overseas. Solid information is said to exist of how this will be perpetrated, but not where - a fact which deepens the authorities' discomfiture and puts their credibility more than ever on the line.
THE MOST critical cautions are directed at high-ranking reserve IDF and intelligence personnel, many of whom have begun second careers in the international security market. Their ventures take them to places which alarm the bureau, notably to unstable Muslim countries throughout Africa and various parts of Asia.
Hizbullah is thirsting to avenge the February assassination of terror kingpin Imad Mughniyeh, perhaps by carrying out a kidnapping like the one of Elhanan Tannebaum. He's the former IDF colonel - and shady businessman - who was released as part of a costly prisoner exchange in January 2004.
Capturing a member of Israel's security community would be another coup for Hizbullah, to say nothing of a valuable source of classified information. The terrorists would demand an exorbitant ransom for our captive, and recent Israeli policy has led them to believe they'd get it.
These dangers have moved MKs from across the political spectrum to suggest that officers' service and retirement conditions stipulate a cooling off period before they can visit Muslim countries. Further study is necessary to determine the practicality of this suggestion.
At the next level of risk are businesspeople who spend long periods abroad and whose identities and routines are known. They are easy to track and attack. Just last week, the bureau disclosed that two Hizbullah attempts to abduct Israelis overseas had been thwarted.
While tourists on short junkets are at lower risk, they too aren't immune, especially if they head for Sinai or South Thailand, which now top the bureau's to-avoid list.
The Sinai threat is regarded as the most acute; the cease-fire with Hamas may send terrorists there in search of Israeli victims. Other bureau warnings include Jordan, India's Jammu and Kashmir, Kenya, Indonesia and Morocco.
WHAT CAN be done to overcome Israelis' apathy toward these warnings? Legislative efforts are already under way to make it easier for travelers to change their plans in the face of dire terror warnings. Travel agents and airlines would be obliged to refund ticket costs to passengers who cite official Israeli warnings as a reason for their cancellation - even at the last minute. This strikes us as a sensible measure.
Another initiative we support would put the onus on tour operators and travel Web sites to direct their customers to counter-terrorism information; travelers would be required to declare in writing that they have been thus warned.
In cases of where travelers are particularly irresponsible, ignoring all warnings, a firmer tactic should perhaps be considered.
For example, the border with Egyptian Sinai cannot be closed. So Israelis who want to vacation there this season - despite the bureau's warning them off - should be required to sign a form at the border crossing confirming that they have been apprised of the dangers and assume personal responsibility for disregarding them. The mere exercise might give some people pause.
That said, let's bear in mind that the real culprits here are not errant business or leisure travelers who may take terrorist warnings too lightly, but the terrorists themselves.
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