'Egypt to control Gaza border'
Prime minister Sharon tells Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee that Egypt will control buffer zone on Egypt-Gaza border and repeats promise that Gaza withdrawal won't take place under fire
JERUSALEM – Egyptian forces would deploy along the Egypt-Gaza border after the upcoming pullout from the Gaza Strip this summer, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday.
Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he reiterated that Israel would ensure its pullout from Gaza would take place without attacks by Palestinian terrorists.
Sharon said Egypt would control the Philadelphi route, a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border, without the need to amend Israel's existing 1979 peace agreement with Egypt.
Prior to the committee meeting, Palestinian terrorists shot and killed an Israeli in the West Bank, marking the latest in a series of violent incidents that have increased in recent months despite a de facto truce by terrorists.
Israel is concerned terrorists in Gaza, who want to mark the pullout as a victory, may try to attack forces and settlers during the evacuation and has threatened to respond in kind if such assaults ensue. Sharon said Israel would make sure the pullout goes through smoothly.
“When I said there wouldn’t be a withdrawal under fire, I meant that the firing would be prevented and not the disengagement,” he told the committee.
Abbas 'powerless' to handle terrorists
Sharon plans to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to discuss coordination on Israel’s pullout from all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four of 120 in the West Bank in August. The two leaders declared a cease-fire in February aimed at ending more than four years of bloodshed.
A senior intelligence officer told Sharon that Abbas was “not showing leadership or confronting the real problems” and would arrive at the summit out of weakness, with the knowledge that he is powerless to act against terrorist groups.
But the officer also said the Palestinians were doing their part to stop weapons-smuggling from Egypt to Gaza by terrorists, citing a drop in smuggling tunnels in buildings in Rafah.
