Israel’s Shin Bet is ranked among the world’s most effective and impressive domestic security agencies. Its reputation is well-earned. Few security services can boast of such impressive counterterrorism results in one of the world’s most challenging and complex arenas. But even the vaunted Shin Bet is apparently flawed, as proven by its failure in recent weeks to foil three deadly terrorist attacks.

In keeping with tradition, no one at the agency is trying to shirk responsibility for the disaster, reflecting the concept that every “successful” terrorist attack is a Shin Bet failure, no matter its record and the dozens of others it thwarted. Three consecutive attacks on Israel’s streets since March 22 resulted in 11 deaths — nine Israelis and two Ukrainian migrant workers.

Israel has not experienced such an intense terrorism spree since the second Palestinian intifada some 20 years ago. Two of the three attacks were carried out by Israeli Arab citizens who identify with the Islamic State. The third assailant was a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, apparently “inspired” by the previous two.

The timing was not coincidental. It came just days before the most sensitive dates on Israel’s 2022 calendar — the March 30 Land Day protest against Israel’s expropriation of Arab land, the holy Muslim month of Ramadan that starts April 2 and the Jewish Passover festival that starts April 15, followed by Easter Sunday two days later. Three major religious observances coinciding within less than a month in the small confines of one of the world’s perennial flashpoints.