Israel will build an undersea barrier stretching a half-mile off the Gaza Strip to keep potential attackers from swimming to its coast after Israel withdraws troops and settlers from Gaza this summer, military officials said Friday.
Israel believes the barrier is necessary because the military will lose surveillance systems in the planned pullout, military officials said on condition of anonymity because the project had not yet begun.
The barrier's first 150m will consist of cement pilings buried in the sandy bottom, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported Friday. A 1.8-meter-deep fence floating beneath the surface will run an additional 800m.
Military officials said construction of the underwater barrier would begin soon, but it would not be completed by the Gaza pullout's scheduled start in mid-August.
A Palestinian official denounced the project Friday, urging Israel to abandon its "mentality of barriers."
"The answer to all these woes of security and so on in is a meaningful peace process, is building the bridges with the Palestinians, is ending the occupation," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
Gaza, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, is surrounded by an Israeli fence built to keep back attackers. Israel also is building a barrier to wall off the West Bank.
"I hope the Israeli mentality of barriers will end," Erekat said. "Now they have land barriers and tomorrow sea barriers and the day after sky barriers and what else? Will they put a barrier around each Palestinian individual, or house?"
In another development, Israel said Friday its dispute with the US over its military technology sales to China would be resolved soon. On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, due in Israel this weekend, acknowledged a sharp disagreement with Israel over the issue.
"We are attentive to American concerns. The issue will be solved over the next few weeks and we will work out all the points of dispute," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
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