Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula are about to become Israel’s next Lebanon, if the assessments of Israeli military officials are correct.

The strategic model that the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon used to such success against Israel—taking advantage of Israel’s withdrawal from the territory by burrowing into the landscape and arming itself to the hilt—is swiftly being replicated on Israel’s southern front.

This trend reveals a high level of coordination among terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas in Israel, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

From the day Israel withdrewfrom the Gaza Strip last summer, terrorists and their weapons flooded over the Egyptian border. Last week, the Jerusalem Post reported one unnamed, high-ranking Israeli Defense Force official as claiming that at least a ton of explosives are shipping from Sinai into the Gaza Strip each month. The arms are coming to Egypt from Iran and Sudan.

“The smuggling must be thwarted before it reaches Sinai,” the officer said. “There are loads of explosives in the desert. Some is transferred to Gaza and some is used for the attacks against targets in the Sinai.”

This officer claims that among the terrorists stationed in Gaza are Hezbollah agents, as well as individuals who are traveling to Iran for terror training and then returning.

In a recent address to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Diskin, director of Shin Bet, Israel’s premiere counterintelligence and security service, said that “the Sinai Peninsula is becoming a haven for arms smugglers and is being used as a terrorist base,” in the words of Haaretz.

“If we don’t move to counter this smuggling, it will continue and create a situation in Gaza similar to the one in southern Lebanon,” Diskin said.

Haaretz reported, “[Diskin] said that Hamas wants to adopt the model used by Hezbollah in Lebanon and is making every effort to create a balance of deterrence against Israel.”

Egyptian security officials are also reportedly expressing concern that Palestinian terrorists are moving south to plan attacks on Egyptian targets. The latest proof—last week’s pillaging of explosives from a Sinai warehouse—prompted officials to raise the alert level to its highest point out of concern for possible attacks against Israeli tourists at Egyptian resorts. One Egyptian official told World Net Daily, “If Palestinians from Gaza succeed in carrying out an attack against Egypt, it will be a turning point in Palestinian terrorism.”

A lamentable reality is that every parcel of land Israel has vacated is now being used for the same purpose: as a base from which its enemies can attack. This is a grim sign of the hollow hope presented by the “peace process.” The Trumpet has long forecast that Israel will pay an increasingly painful price for putting its faith in its enemies.