Deadly Delivery

Rosh Hashanah 5786. While most Israelis are returning from shul and preparing their seudos, something entirely different is happening in Kadesh Barnea, a yishuv on the Egyptian border. Anan Sion, the local council head, sits on his porch, and it’s hard to believe that the scene he is watching is unfolding in sovereign Israeli territory: dozens of weapon-laden drones flying past, one after another. The notification system recently installed on his phone keeps chirping — warning after warning. Dozens of drone smuggling runs are logged that night alone, and over the course of the Yom Tov, 550 drone crossings take place.

“I’m sitting on the porch and drones are passing over my head,” Sion later told a hearing of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “One might reach a kindergarten, and could drop a bomb on it. The capability exists and it’s extremely dangerous. I live in constant fear.”

This is only the tip of a much larger, darker story that the security establishment knows about and quietly discusses behind closed doors — but has so far avoided confronting properly. While Israel is absorbed in fighting Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south, and the threat of Iranian missiles, a different danger is quietly lurking under the radar. This threat does not originate across a border; it’s developing inside the country, and has the potential to make October 7 look like a dress rehearsal for a much larger slaughter.

This is the story of three converging threat lines: an unprecedented flood of weapons flowing into Israel from all directions; a civilian population that is increasingly arming itself in preparation for a “doomsday moment”; and a dramatic escalation in terrorist capabilities in Judea and Samaria. When those three threads are tied together the picture looks grim: The state is losing control of wide swaths of its sovereign territory.