JERUSALEM, 4 August 2005 — Israel and the Palestinians are near agreement on a foot crossing between Gaza and Egypt after Israel quits the occupied strip, sources close to the talks said yesterday.
A deal on the crossing would advance details of what happens after Israel leaves the Gaza Strip, just two weeks before the pullout starts. Allowing a link to Egypt would help Israel say it bears no responsibility for Gaza after the withdrawal, and Palestinians say the pullout will be incomplete if Israel keeps soldiers at the Egypt border, Gaza’s only land link to anywhere but Israel.
Israel had earlier said it was ready for troops to leave the land between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, but had wanted to ensure there was no security threat. The current proposal is for there to be no Israeli troops at the crossing, but European observers would monitor passports and give information to Israel, one of the sources said.
“We are very close to an understanding or to a compromise by which pedestrian traffic will continue to go through the Egyptian-Palestinian terminal with a European third party there,” the source said, asking not to be named.
Meanwhile, thousands of Israeli ultra-rightists rallying against an impending Gaza withdrawal planned to march over the border to Jewish settlements in the occupied land yesterday, a procession police vowed to block. Tents dotted a wood in the southwest town of Ofakim where far-right religious activists — mainly families with young children and groups of teenagers — camped out after a peaceful demonstration near Gaza’s frontier on Tuesday.
A tense confrontation loomed as 15,000 Israeli police deployed around Ofakim and on access routes to the border crossing to Gaza’s main settlement bloc 20 km (12 miles) away. Around 30 protesters were briefly detained before dawn yesterday after slipping past roadblocks and trying to breach the frontier point early in an apparent test of police resolve.
Islamic Jihad, meanwhile, announced it was halting its rocket attacks against Israel, after a rocket fired toward an Israeli town fell short and killed a six-year-old Palestinian boy in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian militant group denied it was one of its rockets that killed Yasser Al-Ashqar. It said it took the decision to suspend the attacks several days ago in order to ensure Israel’s planned pullout from the occupied territory proceeds without disruption. “The Jerusalem Brigades leadership had given orders to all its groups to stop firing rockets to preserve the Palestinian national project at this delicate and decisive stage of history, and to give a chance for a Zionist departure from our dear Gaza Strip in (conditions of) calm,” Islamic Jihad said.
