CAIRO: Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the border between Egypt and Gaza, damaging parts of the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, sources in the area told Daily News Egypt.
The Israeli bombing on the Palestinian side of Rafah has reverberated on the Egyptian side, shattering the glass windows of several homes and causing slight damages to the Rafah border crossing.
The strikes continued until 5 pm, as Israel continued to aim for the tunnels used to smuggle essential food and medical supplies as well as weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Sources in the area said that the tunnels were no longer being used due to the bombings.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “When the terrorist acts stop, and when the smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza stops, then the Israeli fighting will stop.
The tunnels are a main point of contention for Israel, which believes that they are the sole route of rearmament for Hamas. Israel also indicated that it could reoccupy the Philadelphi corridor, a 15-km strip along Gaza’s border with Egypt, under which the tunnels travel.
Israel has placed the onus solely on Egypt to protect the border and end the tunnel smuggling.
Cairo is proposing that it deploys more forces along its border with Gaza, a move which would require amending the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace deal which limits the number of Egyptian troops in the Sinai peninsula.
The Egyptian forces would work in cooperation with a foreign engineering corps which would locate and destroy smuggling tunnels along the border.
Europe, meanwhile, has proposed sending international troops to patrol the border, with Denmark and the Netherlands offering to send forces to the Sinai peninsula, a senior Western diplomat in Israel told AFP.
That plan however is unlikely to get off the ground as “Egypt will never accept foreign forces on its side of the border, according to a European official in Cairo.
Meanwhile, Abbas called for international troops on the Gaza side of the border.
“We want an international presence in the Gaza Strip and not on the Egyptian border, he said in Cairo on Saturday.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters after talks with Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit that his country would be sending a team of experts to help Egypt with its anti-smuggling efforts.
“We agreed in the next few days that a group from Germany will travel to Egypt to see how we can help equip police and provide training, he said.
Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad told Israel radio that Egypt was preferred to an international force when dealing with border security.
“There’s no doubt Egypt has a superb military and security forces which can tackle all the undesirable phenomena from a security standpoint. No one can compete with this, he said, while an international force would be “devoid of intelligence, devoid of an ability to penetrate those doing all of this smuggling, devoid of an operational capability.
“There’s an international force in southern Lebanon and we know exactly what’s going on there, he added, referring to UN peacekeepers stationed on Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.
Gilad is to visit Egypt today for further talks.
Egypt is also contemplating the placement of a Palestinian Authority force on the border, in an updated version of the 2005 agreement which governs the crossings.
