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By Joanna Chen
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The first warnings filtered into the offices of Israel's Shabak security service last January. Terrorists were plotting to carry out an attack on Israeli tourists in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where luxury hotels and bungalow resorts overlook the Red Sea. But the details were scant and, as often occurs with intelligence, only partly accurate. The reports referred to a shooting attack that would be staged by Palestinians with weapons smuggled from Gaza into Egypt. It wasn't until September, eight months later, that the information veered in a different direction. New intel pointed to an upcoming attack by "international jihad"--the term Israeli intelligence uses for Al Qaeda and related Islamic groups--according to a source familiar with the reports.
Israeli security officials now believe that Al Qaeda, using Egyptian operatives, probably carried out the twin attacks at the Taba Hilton and a second resort last week, killing 33 (with at least a dozen people still missing). If they're right, one likely result will be a more aggressive Israeli campaign against Osama bin Laden's network. Already, Mossad considers tracking the group one of its two main objectives (preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb is the other). "To protect Israelis, we have to be active in many places around the world," one senior official said. "We have to be very alert and very patient."
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So do the perpetrators. Their preparation--gathering intelligence, smuggling up to 2,200 pounds of explosives and recruiting bombers--probably lasted a year or more, according to the same source. Though Shabak issued a warning Sept. 9 urging citizens to avoid Egypt, nearly 20,000 Israelis had been vacationing in Sinai the day of the blast. Now officials are wondering if they should have closed the Taba border altogether. "The terrorists would probably have just waited a few weeks and then carried out the attacks," says Boaz Ganor, who heads the International Counter-Terrorism center in Herzliya. "In fact, I wouldn't exclude the possibility that when Israel issued the warning, the terrorists may have waited."
Though most of the fatalities appeared to be Israeli, the wounded included Egyptian hotel workers and at least one American. Charles Collins, an 11-year-old from Providence, R.I., was alone in his ninth-floor room at the hotel when the explosion blew off a balcony and an outer wall. Showered with debris, Collins forced his way past a wedged door and be-gan descending the nine flights, searching for his mother. "When I reached the third floor, there was smoke and you could barely see anything," he recalled a day later. "I heard my mom's screams and I just followed." Finding the men behind the attack will be even harder.
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