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| By Associated Press August 31, 2005 |
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| MK Benyamin Elon (right) shouts at PM Sharon at Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz (left) looks on. (AP) |
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Israel's parliament on Wednesday approved posting Egyptian troops on the Gaza border, allowing an Israeli pullout from the sensitive frontier as part of its evacuation of Gaza. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hard-line challenger, ex-premier Benjamin Netanyahu, charged that Sharon is undermining security by giving up the capability to stop Palestinian arms smuggling.
The parliamentary vote was not close: 53 to 28. Government representatives said leaving the border route is an essential part of ending Israel's 38-year occupation of Gaza.
Netanyahu heaped scorn on Sharon -- whose Cabinet he quit just three weeks ago, refusing to take responsibility for the pullout from Gaza and part of the West Bank.
Netanyahu is basing his challenge on opposition among registered members of the ruling Likud Party to the pullout. They control party institutions, giving Netanyahu a solid chance to unseat Sharon.
Netanyahu was prime minister between 1996 and 1999, adopting a tough line against the Palestinians. Now Netanyahu is trying to pass Sharon on the right, charging that Sharon, the decades-long patron of the settlements, is making concessions and getting nothing in return.
Opening his campaign Wednesday, Netanyahu visited one of the most contentious areas in a trilateral dispute involving Israel, the Palestinians and the United States -- the 5-kilometer (3-mile) corridor between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, Israel's largest settlement in Judea and Samaria (the "west bank").
Netanyahu criticized Sharon for freezing a government plan to construct 3,650 homes in the area to block a Palestinian hold there and on nearby east Jerusalem.
"He has created a precedent that will lead to the division of Jerusalem," Netanyahu told reporters during the tour. "My starting (my campaign) here is not coincidental because Jerusalem is in danger."
Sharon said this week that some communities in Judea and Samaria would be dismantled under a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. But he hopes to keep Israeli control over Maaleh Adumim and at least two other settlement blocs, where most of the West Bank's 246,000 settlers live.
Palestinians charge that the Israeli plan to build in the Maaleh Adumim corridor is a way of cutting the "West Bank" off from east Jerusalem.
Speaking in Gaza on Wednesday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said all settlements "should be removed, from the first stone to the last stone," singling out the ones around Jerusalem.
The United States often criticized expansion of Maaleh Adumim, also worrying about unilateral steps that could pre-empt negotiations or even prevent a peace deal.
During the parliamentary debate on the agreement with Egypt, Netanyahu displayed his basic distrust of both the Palestinians and the Egyptians, insisting on Israeli control of the Egypt-Gaza border, as well as the Gaza seacoast and air space.
"It is important that we keep the Philadelphi road in our hands," he said, referring to the border route, "and certainly not give a port or airport to the Islamic terror base which is going to arise in Gaza."
During more than four years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Israeli forces have uncovered and destroyed dozens of tunnels under the border, used by Palestinians for smuggling arms and contraband into Gaza.
But Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, an ex-army chief of staff and Likud ally of Sharon, dismissed fears about turning the task over to Egypt.
"I want to tell all the members of the house who don't understand -- reality has changed," Mofaz said. "Israel cannot remain in the Philadelphi corridor when there is a better alternative that does not endanger Israel's security," he said.
However, it remains unclear whether the United States or United Nations will recognize the end of Israel's "occupation."
The parliamentary action was little more than a technicality, changing the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty to allow for posting 750 lightly armed Egyptian border police along the 13-kilometer (8-mile) stretch of desert from the Mediterranean Sea alongside Gaza to the Israeli border.
In Gaza on Wednesday, dozens of Palestinian youths stormed an empty Israeli army watchtower guarding the evacuated Gush Katif settlement bloc.
Police struggling to control the crowd fired shots in the air. One policeman was beaten by youths. The incident raised questions about the ability of Palestinian police to maintain control over Gaza once the Israeli withdrawal is completed in the coming weeks.
The AP contributed to this report.
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