By Stan Goodenough
Dec 07, 2005
According to the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, it is imperative that Israel erect a security barrier along the border with Egypt from Eilat to the Gaza Strip.
Knesset Member Yuval Steinitz had warned that Israel?s abandonment of Gaza last August would open the floodgates to more terrorists and weaponry to use against Israel.
On Tuesday he slammed Egypt for allowing the deterioration of the situation along the frontier between the two countries.
Cairo ? with whom the Jewish state co-exists in a cold peace ? was ?aiding and abetting terrorism against Israel?in exactly the same way as Syria and Iran,? Steinitz charged.
?The time has come to invest in a border fence with Egypt and for condemning its behavior in the international arena.?
But while Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a week ago called for sealing the border ?hermetically,? and insisted that there was no difference between crime-related and other kinds of smuggling, he rejected as too expensive a proposal put forward Tuesday for the building of a security fence.
According to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who apparently requested funding for the fence, Sharon had blasted him for even asking for the money, and had then leaked news of their confrontation to the press to damage Mofaz politically.