Egypt Doesn’t Want to Control Gaza

(by Julie Stahl, CNSNews.com) Jerusalem – Israel may want Egypt to take responsibility for Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip but Cairo is making it clear that it is not interested in running Palestinian affairs, an expert here said.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s speech at Monday’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah was the biggest surprise of the summit, said Middle East expert Dr. Hillel Frisch from the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.

Before the summit, Mubarak spoke about wanting to isolate Hamas. But at the summit, he appeared to change his tune, when he called for a dialogue between Hamas and Fatah – a theme he has repeated in media interviews over the last two days.

Israel has been trying to draw Jordan and Egypt back to the way things used to be before 1967, when Jordan was responsible for the West Bank and Egypt for the Gaza Strip, Frisch said in a telephone interview.

The West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights came into Israeli hands as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War.

The call for dialogue between Fatah and Hamas was Mubarak’s way of saying that Egypt will not take responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and that Egypt will not allow Israel to turn the Gaza Strip into an Egyptian problem, Frisch said.

The U.S. and Israel are supporting Abbas as a “moderate” in the hopes of starting a negotiating process with him and his Fatah faction — totally apart from Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Many Israelis, however, doubt that any meaningful peace process can take place with Abbas, whom they say is weak at best – and at worst, a deceiver who heads a terrorist organization.

Dr. Yoram Meital, chairman of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said last week that Egypt wanted to avoid having an Islamic entity on its border and wanted to make sure it didn’t get stuck taking care of the Palestinians.

Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Sulieman has been deeply involved in ironing out disputes between the rival Palestinian factions for more than a year.

In an interview with Egyptian state television, Mubarak said he believed “after a period of calm” that Fatah and Hamas would come to an understanding. He said he thought within a matter of weeks the rival factions could begin talking again.

(That is one of the reasons why many Israelis are urging caution on any negotiations with Abbas.)

In an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot published on Wednesday, Mubarak said that when things calm down, Egypt will return its security delegation to Gaza. That delegation left the day after Hamas took over.

Mubarak also said that Egypt is not capable of stopping the weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip.

“Our defense minister said that the forces deployed [on the border] are not capable of stopping it,” Mubarak said in an interview with Israel’s state-run television. “Show me a country capable of completely defending its borders.”

Tons of weapons and ammunition have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip through tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai Desert. Israel says Egypt could do more to stop the smuggling into Gaza.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to withhold $200 million in foreign military aid to Egypt next year unless Egypt does a better job of detecting and destroying the tunnel and smuggling network.

Egypt, a strong U.S. Middle East ally that has been heavily involved in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians, receives some $1.3 billion annually in military aid from the United States.

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