Israelis felt safe in Egypt's Sinai resorts - a complacency now shattered, reports Peter Hirschberg
For many young Israelis, heading to Eilat at the southern-most tip of the Jewish state and crossing the border into the dreamy tranquillity of the Sinai Desert in Egypt, was a welcome antidote to the pressures of a violence-marred daily existence, characterised by regular terror warnings and the ever-present threat of suicide bombings.
But the carefree escape offered by the azure coastline and sleepy beaches of the Sinai peninsula was snuffed out Thursday night when bombs ripped through two resorts packed with Israeli tourists, some 15,000 of whom had flocked to hotels and beach huts in the area over the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
When the intifada uprising erupted four years ago, Israelis were reluctant to visit Sinai, fearing they might be targets for attack, but over the last 18 months they have headed back to the area in their tens of thousands, packing out hotels and beach camping areas.
If there is still deep animosity toward Israel inside Egypt, despite a peace treaty signed 25 years ago, in Sinai the Israelis were made to feel welcome by the Egyptian staff running the hotels, who were excited once again to be inundated with tourists.
In fact, so comfortable had Israelis again become in the area, which they conquered in the 1967 war and controlled until the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979, that when the security establishment issued a terror travel warning for the area last month, many reacted with cavalier disdain - or with stubborn denial, refusing to give up on the precious breathing space provided by this idyllic backyard.
Interviewed at the Israel-Egypt border crossing as they headed into Sinai in recent weeks, many dismissed the warnings.
After all, they reasoned, what was one terror warning in Sinai compared with the 60 terror warnings that security officials said they had received inside Israel itself.
Watching thousands of Israelis scurry back across the border yesterday from Sinai - some observers wryly coined it the "Exodus from Egypt" - it was clear that they will not be heading back in the opposite direction anytime soon. If the bombers achieved one thing, it is that they have killed off any Israeli tourism to Sinai in the foreseeable future.
But they have probably chalked up another success - a psychological victory - re-instilling in many Israelis a sense of claustrophobia that comes from living in a tiny country in a hostile region. Nearly two years ago, an attack by a group linked to al-Qaeda on an Israeli-owned beach hotel in Kenya killed 15 people, three of them Israelis, ruling out yet another popular travel destination for Israelis and making their world that much smaller.
"We were singing, laughing, playing guitar and eating good food with friendly Bedouin nearby," said Shlomi Heffets, after receiving treatment at a hospital in Eilat for wounds he sustained in one of the blasts. "I never thought it would reach me here or, even if it reached Sinai, that it would reach my little tent."
Most devastating for many Israelis, though, will be the sense that the bombs that killed a still unknown number of their countrymen, also extinguished the sense of normality Israelis so crave and which they tasted as they crossed the border from the Jewish state into a neighbouring Arab country for a break.