CAIRO, 2 September 2005 — Egypt and Israel signed a historic deal yesterday for the deployment of Egyptian border guards to patrol Gaza’s southern border, a major step towards Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Palestinian territory.
“The agreement was signed,” an official said.
The historic deal, which has taken months to negotiate, will see 750 lightly armed officers fan out to stop weapons being smuggled into the Gaza Strip, when Israeli soldiers are recalled from the territory after a 38-year occupation.
The official said the deal was signed during a closed ceremony on a military base near Cairo by two generals whom he did not identify. Israeli media had reported earlier that Israel Ziv, chief of operations at general staff, would be the signatory for the Israeli side.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry refused to comment on the signing.
“This is a not a diplomatic issue but a security arrangement,” said a high-ranking official. The deal was negotiated on the Egyptian side by intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.
On Wednesday, the Israeli parliament overwhelmingly approved the agreement for what will be the first paramilitary deployment on the border since the 1967 Middle East war when Israel seized Gaza, then administered by Egypt, and the Sinai.
The hardline chairman of parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee, Yuval Steinitz, nevertheless dismissed the agreement as a “Trojan horse” for Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, which stipulates that the Sinai remain demilitarized.
Up to 15,000 Palestinian security officers are being primed to secure Gaza’s former Jewish settlements, which were evacuated last week, as soon as Israeli troops withdraw by mid-September, the Palestinian Authority said.
Awad told AFP before the deal was signed that it would leave the ball in the Israeli court, stressing that “Egypt has now done everything to ensure the success of Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza.” There was no official confirmation of when Egyptian troops would start their deployment along the so-called Philadelphi corridor, 14-kilometer buffer zone created by the Israeli Army on the Palestinian side of the Gaza Strip’s southern border.
But Israel’s top-selling Yediot Aharonot said the deployment would kick off on Sunday.
“The Egyptian border guard battalion will begin its deployment along Philadelphi Road on the Egyptian side of the border this coming Sunday,” it said in its Thursday edition.
The landmark agreement was the result of intense negotiations between the two sides, who have recently seen their relations dramatically improve after a long period of cold peace.
“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.
The crucial point of border crossings remains to be solved however, amid Israeli demands to inspect goods entering the Gaza Strip and Palestinian insistence that its citizens be able to move freely through the Rafah terminal with Egypt.
The Rafah crossing is currently the only link to the outside world for the 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
