The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is set to convene on Oct. 15 for an urgent discussion about drone infiltrations on the Jewish state’s southern border with Egypt, lawmaker Zvi Sukkot said Monday.

“I am pleased to report that the committee’s chairman responded to my request and has scheduled a discussion of the matter in the committee plenary immediately after the Sukkot holiday,” stated Sukkot, a member of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party.

“The scale of arms smuggling on the Egyptian border is an existential threat to the State of Israel,” Sukkot tweeted, adding that Jerusalem should declare an “all-out campaign against this phenomenon.”

Data published by Israel’s Ynet outlet earlier on Monday indicated that hundreds of unnamed aerial vehicles had crossed into Israel from Egypt in recent months, highlighting growing concerns over border security.

Between July 16 and Aug. 25, the Israel Defense Force’s Paran territorial defense brigade recorded 384 incidents of drones breaching the border. During the same period, there were 248 sightings of smugglers on the Egyptian side and 254 on the Israeli side, according to the Ynet report.

An IDF military source told the outlet that while most of the smuggling attempts involved goods such as cigarettes and drugs, at least dozens of weapons are being brought in across the border each month using drones.

Yotam Bar, a resident of the agricultural village of Be’er Milka, located close to Israel’s border with Egypt, told Ynet that the drones smuggle “pistols, rifles and ammunition, and even … machine guns.”

“I don’t want to sound hysterical, because we’re not there yet, but the drones can film everything—they can know where the civilian security coordinator lives and where the emergency response team members are. And a UAV can also easily be turned into an explosive drone. It undermines our sense of security and robs us of sleep,” he stated.

Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli on Sunday night joined a patrol on the border with Egypt, during which he said he witnessed “at least 10 heavy drones” crossing the fence.

“Each drone can carry four MAG machine guns or ten long weapons. This means 40 machine guns crossed into our territory—and that’s in just a two-hour patrol,” the member of the ruling Likud Party added.

In the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre from Gaza, the drone infiltrations should “raise 1,200 red flags,” according to Chikli.

The Cabinet minister in his post on X also raised concerns over a TikTok video clip uploaded by Egyptians documenting the movements of Be’er Milka’s civilian security coordinator. “A very bad video,” Chikli tweeted.

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, long a hub for smuggling because of its rugged terrain and weak security, remains difficult to control. Despite Cairo’s efforts to crack down on smuggling routes and strengthen security, traffickers are increasingly using drones to evade authorities.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement to Ynet on Monday that it was “aware of the growing phenomenon of smuggling via drones and is operating in cooperation with the police, while maintaining close monitoring through a variety of methods and means, including observations, intelligence gathering, and collection.”

The military also said work was being carried out to “improve the operational response in the area.”

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