David Dolan reports

David Dolan

Shalom from Jerusalem,

Although I began above with the traditional Hebrew language greeting of 'peace', it feels like anything but that today in Israel. The country's three national television channels suspended regular broadcasts just before noon as news broke of a serious shooting attack on a public bus near the southern port city of Eilat. Although at least seven passengers were wounded, including two children, it didn't look as bad as it could have been. Reports said shots were fired from a passing car, with the terrorist attackers wearing military uniforms that the bus driver said looked like Egyptian uniforms. The attack took place on a road close to the Sinai border with Egypt.

Then the situation just kept getting worse, with two other attacks reported in the area. One assault within minutes of the first involved bombs going off near an IDF patrol vehicle traveling along the border with Egypt, leaving more wounded and two soldiers dead. At the same time, mortar shells were fired over the Egyptian border, raising the possibility that Egyptian soldiers were indeed involved in the incidents, or at least looking the other way, as Lebanese and Syrian soldiers have been known to do along their shared borders with Israel. Then a third armed attack was launched by a second terrorist squad on a private vehicle north of the initial attack, leaving a reported five Israelis dead in its wake, some of them said to be children. Mid-afternoon, soldiers are still battling some of those terrorists. We hear that overall, seven Israelis are dead so far and over two dozen wounded, with three of the terrorists killed. So it was obviously a major coordinated operation emanating from Egyptian territory-an ominous fact for sure. Israeli air force retaliation is expected at any time against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, leading to the likelihood rockets will then be fired at Israeli civilian areas near the Palestinian zone.

Israeli commentators are speaking this afternoon of all this being a possible indication that the country will once again face all out war with Egypt, the largest Arab country in the world, after over three decades of peace, even if a very cold one. At the very least, it illustrates how lawless and dangerous the country has become in the wake of the ouster of the American-backed Mubarak government. Egyptian soldiers were recently given permission by the Israeli government to enter the Sinai Peninsula (they were barred from doing so under the Camp David peace accords without prior coordination with Israel, although small border patrols were allowed). This may turn out to have been a deadly mistake, say some of the commentators. Israel agreed to the move only because lawlessness has dramatically increased in the Sinai in recent months, with Hamas openly operating there along with Al Qaida and other terrorist groups, including agents of Iran.

With Syria falling apart and a Palestinian statehood declaration scheduled for just over one month from today at the United Nations in New York, it looks like violence may be returning to the land in a big way. I will send out a full report on the situation with my monthly news summary near the end of August.