The Ministerial Committee on National Security Affairs met in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to discuss expanding the scope of its military operations in the Gaza Strip. Israel has resumed its violations of the fragile truce in the sector, as nine Palestinians, mostly children, were injured in an Israeli air strike. A day after the U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell met with the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Yediot Aharonot said Olmert presented an outline of a peace plan that would evacuate settlers from the West Bank in exchange for the Palestinians giving them lands equal in size in the Negev region, while Jerusalem would be under international auspices and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be connected via a causeway or a tunnel. Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said that the resistance factions in the Syrian capital of Damascus are studying the formation of a new Palestinian authority that would represent the Palestinian people at home and abroad instead of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), as Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas Political Bureau, has promised. Dr. Nabil Shaath, member of the PLO Central Committee, considered what Meshaal said a calamity and a destruction of Arab action. Palestinian politician Hassan Asfour considered it a continuation of the Palestinian divide in favor of Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohamed Bassiouni, Chairman of the People's Assembly's Committee for Arab Affairs and National Security, considered it not possible and illogical.
Nayef Hawatmeh, Secretary-General of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said there is an Israeli proposal to establish a security belt on the border between Egypt and Gaza for a depth of 500 meters, which the Front has rejected.
