Israeli minister envisages peacekeepers in Gaza

Jerusalem, May 29: Israeli-Palestinian fighting in and round the Gaza Strip could end with the deployment of a foreign peacekeeping mission, including troops from neighbouring Egypt, an Israeli cabinet minister said.

Pensioners Minister Rafi Eitan said that nearly two weeks of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air raids may prompt intervention like the boosted UN force in Lebanon after Israel's war against Hezbollah guerrillas last year.

''The same thing, sooner or later, will happen in the Gaza Strip, with the senior partner in such a force being Egypt because it has no choice,'' Eitan told Israel Radio.

''And when the Egyptians are there, when 500 or 600 (Palestinian) civilians are killed, no one will say anything,'' he said. ''That is what will eventually happen. We are getting there, gradually.'' Israel long resisted the peacekeeper idea. Though it has signalled flexibility on the issue since the Lebanon war, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman said Eitan's thinking was not that of the government.

''The official policy of the state of Israel is that the Palestinian Authority should take responsibility for themselves in Gaza and in the West Bank, fight terror, and have a stable government that would enable going forward to a two-state solution,'' the spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said.

Egyptian involvement in Palestinian affairs, especially in Gaza, is a touchy subject as Cairo controlled the territory before Israel captured it in a 1967 war. Israel quit Gaza in 2005, a move followed by spiralling cross-border violence.

The latest hostilities between the Jewish state and the dominant Palestinian Hamas Islamists have stirred new calls at home and abroad for peacekeepers in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Palestinians want independence in both territories.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said last week after talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials that a peacekeeping force was ''one of many suggestions'' that the EU would be ''open to consider'' if proposed by the parties.

But Solana said Egyptian officials had made clear to him that ''they don't see the need for that''. The Palestinian government has said peacekeepers were not yet on its agenda.

Western diplomats say they doubt enough European countries would come forward for a peacekeeping force in Gaza, especially if Israel insisted on a sweeping mandate that required the foreign troops to disarm or arrest Palestinian militants.

The diplomats said, however, countries in the region like Jordan, Egypt and Turkey could be candidates.

Eitan said he also anticipated a future Jordanian deployment in the West Bank, which Amman lost to Israel in the 1967 war.

Reuters>