CAIRO: Israel has offered to assist Egypt in building a technologically advanced wall along its border with the Gaza strip, the Israeli press reported Monday. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited an Israeli defense source as saying that fears of another breach like the one in January, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured into the Egyptian side of Rafah, prompted the Israeli offer. The newspaper also reported that Egypt is reticent about the idea for fears of inflaming domestic criticism, but has agreed to discuss the issue following US pressure to prevent arms smuggling through tunnels beneath the border. Israel is proposing a three-tiered wall with concrete walls, an electronic fence and tech-savvy system able to locate tunnels under the ground. According to the paper, Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad and a senior Shin Bet (the Israeli Security Agency) official will travel to Cairo next week to discuss arms smuggling across the border with Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Egypt recently negotiated a period of calm between Hamas and Israel and is also currently in the process of arbitrating a prisoner exchange for captured Israeli solder Gilad Shalit. Egypt has come under fire from both Israel and the US for not doing enough to prevent the smuggling of arms across the Gaza border, despite denials to the contrary. When US Congress temporarily froze $100 million of the annual aid package given to Egypt, one of the conditions was improving security at the Gaza border. Egypt has stated that an impediment to improving security at the border is a tenet from the 1979 Camp David peace accord with Israel, which limits the number of Egyptian guards that can be posted to patrol the border to 750.
