Israel wants to move border crossing

Israel will insist on moving the Gaza-Egypt border crossing to a new location after Israel’s pullout from Gaza so Israeli inspectors can continue to check goods and people, Israel’s Security Cabinet was told today, and the emerging position appears to rule out the deployment of foreign inspectors at Gaza crossings.

The Palestinians have said they would not agree to move the crossing to a three-way meeting point between Israel, Egypt and Gaza, and it was not clear how the dispute will be resolved, with just a week to go to the start of the Gaza pullout. International mediators have proposed leaving the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt in place, and allowing foreign inspectors to take the place of Israeli security officials.

“Israel claims it wants to get out of Gaza but in reality it wants to continue to control Gaza,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian spokeswoman. “What Israel really seeks to do it to conrol Gaza both militarily and economically by moving the Rafah crossing ...’

The Security Cabinet did not make a final decision on the border arrangements, but the insistence on moving the crossing to the three-way meeting point, near the Israeli communal farm of Kerem Shalom, indicated that Israel is not yet willing to rely on others to carry out security tasks. The deployment of foreign inspectors at Rafah would have given Palestinians relatively unfettered access to the world for the first time in decades.

Israel’s Security Cabinet also said Israeli troops could leave the Gaza-Egypt border by the end of the year if the deployment of some 750 Egyptian troops there goes smoothly, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because a final decision has not been reached.

International envoy James Wolfensohn, who has been trying to broker an agreement between the two sides on border crossings, has urged Israel to make a decision on border arrangements before the withdrawal starts. He has said the withdrawal will only be a success if fenced-in Gazans can move freely – a prerequisite for reviving their battered economy.

Israel’s main concern about the border crossings and ports is that militants could use them to smuggle weapons and infiltrate comrades into Gaza from Egypt after Israel leaves.

The Security Cabinet met a day after Benjamin Netanyahu resigned as finance minister, in a last-minute protest against the Gaza pullout. The resignation made Netanyahu, a hard-liner and former prime minister with ambitions to reclaim the top job, the new leader of withdrawal opponents.

He was expected to challenge Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for leadership of the ruling Likud Party after the pullout, a move that could lead to elections in coming months.

Netanyahu said he fears the pullout will turn Gaza into a ”base of Islamic terror” and endanger Israel. Though he couldn’t stop it, he said, he wanted no official part of it. However, Netanyahu was also motivated by political concerns, commentators said, and is positioning himself to run as a hard-line alternative to Sharon.

Netanyahu, 55, dropped his political bombshell yesterday as the full Cabinet debated removal of three isolated Gaza settlements – Kfar Darom, Morag and Netzarim. He put a note with his negative vote and a resignation letter in front of Sharon and left.

The ministers then voted 17-5 to approve the dismantling of the three settlements, the first in a series of four evacuation votes. The vote was largely a formality, since the government has repeatedly approved the overall withdrawal.

The pullout, starting on August 15 will remove about 9,000 settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank.

Though some settlers are expected to resist their removal, Haim Altman, a spokesman for the government agency in charge of compensating the settlers, said 1,018 of the 1,700 affected families had applied for compensation.

The ruling Likud Party largely opposes the pullout, and Netanyahu’s resignation was seen as the opening move in his campaign to wrest the party leadership from Sharon ahead of next year’s elections.

Instant polls published in Israeli newspapers Monday showed Sharon maintaining a strong lead over Netanyahu. A survey of 498 people published in the Maariv newspaper showed 47% of voters supporting Sharon as prime minister over Netanyahu, who had the support of 28% . Among Likud voters, 51% favoured Sharon over 34 percent in favour of Netanyahu. The margin of error was 4.4 percent.

Netanyahu has a well-known flair for the dramatic. Speaking native American English, he became Israel’s main foreign policy spokesman in the 1990s and has a large following in the US. He once did a live TV interview wearing a gas mask against a possible Iraqi chemical attack.

Jewish settler leaders had hoped the charismatic Netanyahu would quit the government and lead their struggle against the Gaza pullout. They praised Netanyahu’s decision, but Eran Sternberg, spokesman for the Gaza settlers, said it came “far too late.”

Israel’s stock market, which dropped 5% within an hour of Netanyahu’s resignation, rebounded today.

Netanyahu had adopted a pro-business economic policy and cut welfare benefits in more than two years as finance minister. Sharon said he would stick to that approach and picked his confidant, Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, as interim finance minister.

Sharon also told Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer that the upcoming state budget would meet deficit and expenditure targets, Sharon’s office said in a statement.