Sunday night’s shooting attack at the central bus station in Be’er Sheva, like last week’s attack on a bus in Jerusalem and a predawn shooting attack in the Qalandiyah refugee camp, reflects the return of firearms to the terrorist picture, dominated until now by stabbings. It also may have been a more carefully planned attack than its predecessors. The incident that began the current wave of terror, the murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin near Nablus on October 1, was a shooting attack planned and executed by a Hamas cell. But since then, most of the attacks have been committed by individuals acting on their own.

Preliminary and partial information from the Be’er Sheva attack indicates that the terrorist was armed with a handgun and a knife. Like the terrorists in several other recent attacks, he stabbed a soldier and then grabbed his rifle. But unlike those previous assailants, he also knew how to use it.

The subsequent investigation will have to determine whether anyone prepared him for the attack, drove him to Be’er Sheva or supplied his pistol.

This attack didn’t require the same complex planning as the suicide bombings of the second intifada, but it may be the work of a more organized cell than other attacks of the past few weeks. Over time, such cells can do more harm than lone stabbers can. But their preparations also leave a clearer intelligence “signature,” increasing the likelihood that they’ll be caught before striking.

Read the article in full at Haaretz.