• Give the keys back  - an interview withSaleem Abu Safia
If the current ceasefire is successful there should be a chance to improve the operation of the crossing.

• Reduce arms smuggling  - Shlomo Brom
One of the ideas that should be considered is deploying international monitors along the border.

• The only way in or out  - an interview withStuart Shepherd
You have 1.4 million people in Gaza who have very limited options to leave the country or to even engage in commerce.

• Unilateral action is not the answer  - Gamal A. G. Soltan
Solid evidence indicates that the rising security threat in Sinai is linked to activities taking place in Gaza.

Give the keys back
an interview with Saleem Abu Safia

BI: How is the current arrangement at Rafah working out?

Abu Safia: First of all, let me affirm that the Palestinian side has respected and been committed to the Agreement on Movement and Access, AMA, that was signed in November 2005. The Israelis have not shown this commitment. Here I am not talking only about the Rafah crossing but all the crossings. We accepted European supervision at Rafah to monitor the performance of both sides. As far as I know the number of violations of the agreement that were recorded on the Israeli side are greater than those on the Palestinian side.

Unfortunately, the Israelis have turned the issue of the crossings into a political one. They open them and shut them according to political decisions. Today [November 29], for instance, it was agreed that Rafah would be open for two days, but Israel suddenly shut it down with more than 3,000 Palestinians hoping to leave Gaza and more than 2,000 still waiting on the Egyptian side to enter.

The whole issue is connected to Israeli paranoia. Now, since the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, all the crossings, not only Rafah, but Karni and Erez, are rarely open any more.

BI: Is the AMA itself workable?

Abu Safia: The crossings agreement itself, were the Israelis to respect it, is workable. The Palestinian procedures there, however, are few and need to be improved. We need to increase operational capacity and we need new equipment. The equipment we use at the moment is from Gaza International Airport, whose runways Israel destroyed.

We have improved the performance of our employees at the crossing. But it still needs a lot of work to turn it into a modern crossing that can meet Palestinian needs. Such improvements cannot be undertaken, however, with these constant Israeli closures.

As I say, we have respected the AMA for Rafah in the past 10 months under European supervision. We have protected the European crews and we have taken into consideration European comments on our performance. When the Europeans complained at the large number of Palestinian tradesmen passing through the crossing with wares, we acted.

But the Europeans are also required to oblige the Israelis to respect the agreement. Meanwhile, the Israelis have been trying to impose an alternative to the Rafah crossing at Kerem Shalom, but the Palestinian Authority has asserted many times that this is not acceptable.

BI: How can arrangements be improved?

Abu Safia: The procedures at the crossings are organized according to specialization. The police has its role, while Palestinian security and the presidential guard maintain security for the crossings, passengers and the European supervisors alike. There are a number of things that need to arranged, especially related to the commercial element of the crossing, but there is an ongoing Palestinian-Egyptian dialogue to address these matters.

The actual building needs improvement, and the Egyptians need to make similar improvements on their side. It is not logical to improve the crossing on the Palestinian side only. In the coming weeks there will be a meeting with the Egyptian side to discuss this issue.

Once the crossing is provided with comfortable halls and services it will increase passenger capacity and help improve security procedures.

BI: Does the current ceasefire constitute an opportunity to enhance arrangements at Rafah?

Abu Safia: If the current ceasefire is successful--and this of course depends on the Israeli side--there should be a chance to improve the operation of the crossing, indeed, there should be an improvement in the overall political situation. But we need the intervention of the international community to avoid the crossings being exploited by the Israelis to exert pressure on the Palestinian side. The Israelis must forget that they occupied Gaza and give the keys back. The crossing should be outside the current conflict, and we will take responsibility for any related security procedures.

BI: What can Palestinians and Egyptians do to ensure an open border that does not endanger the Paris Protocol?

Abu Safia: There is high-level coordination between the Egyptian and the Palestinian sides on a new mechanism to operate the commercial section of the crossing so as not to affect the Paris Protocol. There are also efforts afoot to reopen all the crossings in Gaza and another three crossings in the West Bank with European supervision and funding.

BI: How can you prevent people from storming the borders and the crossing again?

Abu Safia: If the crossing is open regularly there is no need to storm it again. Everybody knows that an open crossing is in the Palestinian interest. I hope that the issue of Shalit will end so the crossing can operate like it did before.- Published 30/11/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Saleem Abu Safia is the general manager of the Palestinian crossings.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon formulated his disengagement plan, one of the contentious issues was the fate of the area of the Gaza-Sinai border, the so-called Philadelphi corridor. The security community in Israel argued that an Israeli withdrawal from this area would open the road for large-scale smuggling of weapons that would eventually pose a serious security threat. It suggested that the IDF retain its control over the narrow strip of land along the border even after the disengagement.

Sharon decided eventually to withdraw fully from the Gaza Strip, including this area, for two reasons. First, he wanted his disengagement plan to enjoy international legitimacy; he sought an international seal of approval for the Israel-Gaza border that could be achieved only with full withdrawal. Second, Sharon believed that an ongoing Israeli presence in this land strip in any case could not stop all the smuggling and would only generate more friction, whereas Israel could agree with the international community and Egypt on arrangements that would limit smuggling.

Indeed, on the eve of implementation of disengagement Israel reached agreements with the US and Egypt that covered two points: positioning of international monitors at the Rafah border crossing and deployment of additional Egyptian troops to the border area to enable Egypt to fulfill its commitment to prevent smuggling of arms. This last point was necessary because the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty limits the deployment of Egyptian military troops in this area.

More than a year has passed since the disengagement and it seems that the pessimistic predictions of those that opposed IDF withdrawal from this area have been vindicated. The European Union monitors are operating quite well at the Rafah border crossing, but Egypt has failed miserably to block the smuggling of vast quantities of weapons and explosives through tunnels that are dug under the border fence/wall. According to Israeli estimates, hundreds of tunnels are operating along the border.

The smuggling is influencing the balance of power in the Gaza Strip because of the quantity and quality of the weapons that are involved. Thousands of rifles and huge amounts of ammunition have reached Gaza, while the armed Palestinian groups have succeeded in obtaining new categories of weapons that were not available to them before the disengagement, e.g., tons of military standard explosives, anti-tank missiles, military standard rockets, and probably also man-portable anti-aircraft missiles. The smuggling has also enabled the armed groups to upgrade the performance of rockets that are produced inside the Gaza Strip--the main weapon used against civilian targets in Israel and the main cause of the recent escalation in violence.

It is not clear why Egypt is failing in its operation to stop the smuggling. Presumably Egypt cannot stop it entirely because it is extremely difficult to completely seal a border. It is especially difficult when the smugglers' incentive is so strong: for them, this is not only a political matter; it is first and primarily a source of income for two impoverished communities on the Palestinian and Egyptian sides of the border.

Nevertheless, the Egyptians can do better. If the IDF could uncover more then ten tunnels and destroy them during a limited military operation in which a very short length of the border area was occupied for a few days, the Egyptians can detect the tunnels more easily in an area that is fully controlled by them. Indeed, when pressure is put on Egypt and its security forces are more active they are more successful.

Some in Israel speculate that the Egyptian effort to detect these tunnels is very limited in scope because of lack of motivation: "Why should the Egyptians oppose the flow of weapons to their poor Palestinian brothers that are facing the ruthless Israeli killing machine?" According to this explanation, Egypt never intended to keep its commitment to Israel. The problem with this thesis is that it contradicts the very reasonable premise that Egypt is interested in stabilizing the situation in Gaza and preventing the overflow of trouble to its side of the border. Since the Palestinian elections at the beginning of this year, Egypt has also evinced an interest in preventing any further strengthening of Hamas, a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Assuming Egypt does have a strong motivation to stop the smuggling, one can only conclude that this failure is simply a show of Egyptian incompetence. Egypt is not capable of operating effectively against the smugglers because of corruption and lack of effective control in these areas of Sinai. The authorities also appear to be afraid of clashes with the local population. Every Egyptian should be concerned with the implications for the internal security situation in Egypt of the fact that tons of explosives and thousands of rifles and other weapons are making their way from places like Sudan through Egypt to Gaza and the Egyptian security apparatus cannot intercept them.

Based on the experience of the war in Lebanon, the Israeli government is under strong pressure not to allow a similar build-up of the armed militias in the Gaza Strip and to prevent it by force if necessary. A strong political and security lobby is calling for the reoccupation of the Philadelphi corridor. The ceasefire concluded on November 26 may weaken these pressures, but not for long: continued smuggling of weapons will probably be one of the main potential reasons for the collapse of the ceasefire. On the other hand, reoccupation of this area would create a constant source of violent friction between the two sides.

Anyone who looks at the ceasefire as the first step in a process of stabilization that provides the right environment for a resumption of mutual engagement and a political process should understand that solving the problem of the Philadelphi corridor is an essential element of this process. The four parties--Israel, Egypt, the international community and the Palestinian Authority--should reexamine the security arrangements along the border and modify them.

One of the ideas that should be considered is deploying international monitors along the border. They would act in cooperation with the Egyptian security forces and the PA security forces on both sides of the border. On the Egyptian side they would be linked with the MFO, the international force already deployed in Sinai, and on the Palestinian side with the monitors in Rafah. Another potential idea is creating a relatively wide exposed area on both sides of the border by evacuating the residents and providing them with alternative and improved housing. Resumption of security cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security forces might also improve the effectiveness of counter-smuggling activities, but this is not expected to happen soon.

One cannot realistically expect a complete halt to a smuggling operation along this border that is based on personal financial gain. But much can and should be done to limit the scope of the problem.- Published 30/11/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Brig. Gen. (ret.) Shlomo Brom is a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.