Israeli cabinet approves Egypt Gaza deployment
AFP
Date: 08-28-05
JERUSALEM (AFP) - The Israeli cabinet approved an agreement to deploy Egyptian border police along the southern frontier of Gaza following Israel's historic pullout from the territory.
Ministers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deployment, with 18 votes for and two against, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said Sunday.
The vote paves the way for the deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards along the frontier between southern Gaza and Egypt, allowing Israeli troops to pull out of the area.
The guards will be only lightly armed and their mission will be to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt to the Gaza Strip.
The planned deployment will be put before parliament on Wednesday in a vote where it is also expected to be approved. It will then be inked by senior Egyptian and Israeli military officials.
The accord, known as the Philadelphi agreement, will see Egyptian guards take up positions along the 14-kilometre (eight-mile) stretch facing the Philadelphi buffer zone which flanks the border and is currently controlled by the Israeli army.
Israeli and Egyptian officials reached an agreement over the deployment last Wednesday, a day after Israeli completed its historic withdrawal of all Jewish settlers from Gaza and from four other enclaves in the northern West Bank.
Although Israel said it would withdraw all troops from the Gaza Strip, it was planning to keep a small contingent of soldiers at the Rafah border post in an area which has been a major conduit of arms smuggling.
"All the obstacles to an agreement were lifted when the Egyptians made a commitment not to transfer arms to the Palestinian Authority," a senior Israeli official said last week.
Asked Sunday how Israel could guarantee that the Egyptians would prevent any such transfer, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel had obtained "the right to veto" any deal which would see Egyptian equipment being brought into Gaza, public radio reported.
He gave no further details about how such a veto could be used.
An official close to Sharon told AFP the troop pullback would take place "in the next few months" and that Israel would carefully monitor how the agreement was being implemented.
However, the source said, there is still no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the border crossing itself.
"We are ready to let the Palestinians leave Gaza through Rafah without us being in control. But there is no question of allowing Palestinians or merchandise from Egypt cross into Gaza without being checked by us," he said.
Israel wants all those entering Gaza to pass through an Israeli-controlled border post near Kerem Shalom kibbutz where the Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian territories converge.
The Egyptian deployment will be the first by paramilitary units on the border since the 1967 Middle East war when Israel seized the Gaza Strip, then administered by Egypt, and the Sinai peninsula.
Under the 1979 peace accord between Israel and Egypt, only lightly armed police officers can be posted at the demilitarized zone after the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai.
The Rafah crossing is currently the only link to the outside world for the 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Source
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