Egypt and Israel are nearing a deal on the Gaza disengagement plan's security arrangements. Dina Ezzat reports Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres's Monday morning Sharm El-Sheikh meeting with President Hosni Mubarak took place on very short notice. The visiting Israeli official was notified late Sunday afternoon that he was "welcome" to discuss the details of Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip -- scheduled to take place in August -- with the Egyptian president. On Sunday, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul- Gheit was in Israel for talks with top Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Shaoul Mofaz. Abul-Gheit's meetings -- taking place three days after similar talks conducted by Intelligence Chief Omar Soleiman -- also tended to focus on the complicated details of security arrangements in Gaza following the withdrawal. "This issue [the scope of Egypt's security contribution] is a very tricky one. We have been discussing it with the Israelis for a few months," commented a senior Egyptian official. An agreement was near, he said, but not yet final. According to this official, "the short version of a very long and ongoing story," is that Israel wants a clear "and effective" security presence in Gaza, and on the Gaza-Egypt borders -- after the disengagement -- to make sure that "militant Palestinian groups don't use the disengagement to serve their purposes". Egypt welcomed the request, while insisting on certain criteria for its police/military and intelligence presence in Gaza, and on both sides of the Gaza-Egypt borders. These demands included two key factors: an adequate number of properly equipped troops and intelligence officers; and a clear mandate for those troops and officers to be agreed upon by the Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian sides. Above all, sources suggest, Egypt is opposed -- "under any circumstances" -- to accommodating any ideas of possible joint security operations with Israel against Palestinian targets. Sources said an agreement has thus far been elusive, mainly due to bickering on the Israeli side over the details of the Egyptian presence; Mofaz, for instance, is said to have demonstrated unmistakable reluctance to compromise on potential Egyptian troop volume and equipment. According to statements made by Peres during and after his Sharm El-Sheikh trip, however, Mofaz has since presented his high-level Egyptian visitors with a comprehensive proposal on the matter. The proposal was forwarded to President Mubarak for a final decision. The plan, Egyptian sources say, provides Egypt with an adequate number of troops and officers, and a fairly appropriate level of equipment. It also lays out a great many responsibilities vis-à-vis Egypt's checking of Palestinian militants' moves. According to sources, Washington recommended the plan as workable. Other than a few specific details related to the actual number of Egyptian troops on the border, and the nature of planned intelligence coordination between Egypt, Israel and Palestine, the Egyptian side also seems to find the plan acceptable. In Sharm El-Sheikh, Peres promised a positive Israeli response to Egypt's concerns. He also pledged a favourable Israeli reaction to Egypt's demand that Israel take prompt and sufficient steps on the ground to alleviate the Palestinian people's suffering in Gaza, which has resulted from aggressive Israeli closure measures. "Gaza should not be a prison," Abul-Gheit said, during a press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Speaking less than an hour before Peres's arrival in Sharm El-Sheikh, Abul-Gheit also stressed that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza "needs to be complete and comprehensive", by granting the Palestinians the right to operate both their airport and harbour, and providing for safe and easy access to both Egypt and the West Bank. By making progress on security arrangements, Egypt believes it has provided necessary backing for this week's summit between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Meanwhile, in his talks with Peres, the president stressed that Egypt is determined to continue working hard with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, in order to ensure that the withdrawal will not be a case of "Gaza first, Gaza last." According to presidential spokesman Soleiman Awad, Mubarak also stressed this point unequivocally during an interview with Israeli TV. Palestinians, Mubarak said, need to be hopeful about the future because the withdrawal is not an end in and by itself. He warned that if not coupled with serious relief measures, the withdrawal will not secure stability and the situation on the ground may worsen to the point that Israel could reoccupy the strip. In his TV interview Mubarak also stressed that Cairo will continue its efforts to maintain in place the truce which has been accepted by all Palestinian militant resistance factions but, these factions say, has been recently violated by Israel. As Palestinian diplomatic sources in Cairo argue, the issue of the resistance factions will continue to be used by Israel as a pretext for its military attacks against Palestinians. According to these sources the goodwill expressed by Peres in Cairo was not reflected in the tone and vocabulary used by the Israeli prime minister during his Tuesday summit with the Palestinian president. "In fact the threats made by Israel to resume its targeted assassinations of senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance figures are tailored to bombard the truce and cast shadows over the withdrawal, and may even hamper the pullout," said one Cairo-based Palestinian diplomat. These concerns, he said, were conveyed to President Mubarak on Tuesday night in a telephone conversation with Palestinian President Abbas. Mubarak and US President George W Bush are likely to discuss the next step in the Palestinian- Israeli peace process at a meeting tentatively scheduled to take place on the sidelines of next month's G8 summit in Scotland.
