A senior Israeli defense official yesterday challenged the Palestinian Authority to slam shut the open border between Gaza and Egypt, saying its credibility was on the line over its failure to stop the flow of people, including gunrunners, across the frontier.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority have both said that they fear al-Qaeda terrorists will infiltrate into Gaza through the open Gaza-Egypt border, where Palestinians and Egyptians have been crossing largely unfettered since Israel withdrew from the area on Monday.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday said the chaos at the border had been brought under control to a "very high degree." But on Thursday evening people were still crossing, though the numbers had dropped from previous days when thousands passed freely across the frontier.
PHOTO: AP
Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, said weapons had been smuggled across the porous border and the rate of smuggling was likely to increase if the Palestinians failed to act quickly.
"The Palestinian authority is facing a supreme test of its credibility," he told Israel Army Radio. "They look like they're running a system which has neither law nor order, neither organization nor authority."
Egypt has started deploying 750 border troops to secure its side of the frontier and prevent weapons smuggling, but has so far failed to halt the flow of people and arms, including hundreds of assault rifles and pistols.
Gilad, however, said he believed the Egyptians would act.
"Egypt ... has to impose down to the smallest detail a regime of security ... to stop smuggling, to stop breaches of its sovereignty. As far as I understand the Egyptians, they are determined to do that," he said.
Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said the Israelis had caused the problem by not coordinating their Gaza pullout with the Palestinians.
"Mr. Gilad knows very well that the whole thing was unilateral," Erekat said. "We had to pick up the pieces after they left without them even telling us when they were going to leave."
SPEECH
Meanwhile, in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the Palestinians are entitled to their own state, and his country had no desire to rule over them. He urged reconciliation and compromise to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but said that after Israel's Gaza pullout it was now up to the Palestinians to "prove their desire for peace" by putting a halt to terror and disarming militants.
"The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them and have no aspiration to rule over them," Sharon said. "They are also entitled to freedom, and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own."
Sharon's Likud party passed a resolution in 2002 opposing a Palestinian state and also largely opposed the Gaza withdrawal.
NEW GROUPING
Commentators saw the UN speech, made in Hebrew and broadcast live during Israeli prime time, as indicating Sharon's intention to leave his divided party and seek a new, more centrist grouping.
"It sounded like the Prime Minister's statement of farewell to his party," Aluf Benn wrote in the Haaretz daily. "Sharon appeared to understand that he has no chance of winning in the Likud and must seek a new political way.
The Likud's governing central committee is to convene on Sept. 26 for what promises to be a stormy session in which former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to demand a date for primaries where he will challenge Sharon for the party leadership.
Netanyahu seized on Sharon's speech to accuse him of abandoning his conservative party faithful and turning soft on the Palestinians.
However, Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan Khatib yesterday slammed Sharon's speech as a post-Gaza withdrawal PR stunt given the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
He criticized Sharon's call for Palestinians to now prove their desire for peace as lacking credibility because of Israeli plans to expand settlements and build its separation barrier in the West Bank.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
RSS