According to a Channel 2 report, Israel warned Belgium several weeks ago about inadequate security measures at Brussels’ Zaventem Airport where two deadly bomb attacks took place on Tuesday.

The warning came from Israeli officials charged with evaluating security standards at airports that operate flights to Tel Aviv, the channel said.

The Israelis found “significant shortcomings” at the Brussels airport.

The Channel 2 report is one of several to emerge since the attacks that have raised questions about Belgium’s defenses against terrorism.

Brussels is the seat of European Union institutions and of NATO.

The bombings at the airport and a third at a subway station in the EU neighborhood claimed at least 31 lives and injured 300. The Islamic State group, or ISIS, claimed responsibility.

According to Israeli daily Haaretz, the Belgian security services, as well as other Western intelligence agencies, had advance and precise intelligence warnings regarding the terrorist attacks in Belgium.

The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.

Despite the advance warning, the intelligence and security preparedness in Brussels was limited in its scope and insufficient for the severity and immediacy of the alert.

As far as is known, the attacks were planned by the headquarters of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Raqqa, Syria, which it has pronounced as the capital of its Islamic caliphate.

The terror cell responsible for the attacks in Brussels was closely associated with the network behind the series of attacks in Paris last November. At this stage, it appears that both were part of the same terrorist infrastructure, connected at the top by the terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in both the preparation for the Paris attacks and its implementation.

Belgian authorities have named the two airport attackers as brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui. Laachraoui, who was photographed with the brothers at the airport and was observed fleeing the scene, is the subject of a massive manhunt.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said one of the brothers had been detained in his country as a foreign terrorist fighter in June and deported back to Europe.

Erdogan said Belgian authorities failed to confirm the suspect’s jihadist links and released him despite Ankara’s warnings that he was “a foreign fighter.”

Shmuel Sasson, a former head of security of Israel’s El Al Airlines, declared : ‘’The attack against Zaventem Airport emphasized the vulnerability of public areas of airports, which are usually closed halls, crowded with people. This can significantly increase the damage caused by the explosiion, as luggage and packages are not checked at this stage. One may draw a parallel to the 2011 Moscow Airport attack. Security check outside the airport are not the answer, as it will create a new vulnerability by the long lines that these checks will creat at the entrance of the airport.’’

Prof. Boaz Ganor, founder and Executive Director of the renowned Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, writes that ‘’the Belgian security services in particular and the Europeans in general must carry out thorough self-examination to discover how an attack of this scale went unnoticed beneath their radar.’’

‘’Belgium must develop better intelligence capabilities alongside a more effective doctrine to cope with terrorism,’’ he says.

by Maud Swinnen