Palestinian Unity Sought With Foreign Troops in Gaza

Seeking to reunite the warring Palestinian Arab factions, Prime Minister Fayyad is considering deploying troops from neighboring Arab countries in Gaza.

Mr. Fayyad is floating the proposal, first reported by Ha'aretz, just as Israel is announcing a crackdown on Islamic charities that it says are used to finance the Hamas government in Gaza. Israel has long opposed any reconciliation with Hamas, which does not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist.

The prime minister reportedly has already sounded out the idea, aimed at bringing Hamas's armed soldiers in Gaza under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority, with Arab and Western diplomats.

Mr. Fayyad — a pro-Western former official at the World Bank who was appointed prime minister last year as a compromise candidate belonging neither to Hamas nor to Fatah, which controls the West Bank — says his aim is to reunite Gaza and the West Bank under one government. Shortly after a bid to unite the two factions in 2007, Hamas, a fundamentalist group backed by Iran, took over Gaza and ousted all the security forces loyal to the more secular Fatah.

The new proposal includes "seeking Arab security support to help with the security situation in Gaza and deal with the obvious need for help that we have in restructuring our security capabilities and provide security services in a manner that is reassuring and effective to all during a transitional period," Mr. Fayyad told Reuters yesterday.

According to several reports, the original idea was to bring in troops from neighboring Egypt, which wields considerable influence in Gaza. But Cairo has been cool to any solution that would include deepening its involvement in Gaza.

Still, other Arab countries have already indicated a willingness to deploy troops in Gaza, Reuters reported. Mr. Fayyad would like those troops to take charge of Gaza security, unifying armed forces loyal to Hamas with West Bank soldiers loyal to the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, according to Ha'aretz.

Although some Israeli officials recently considered a deployment of international troops in Gaza, perhaps under a U.N. mandate, Israelis have long been skeptical of any foreign involvement on their borders and are unlikely to sign on to a Gaza deployment along the lines of Mr. Fayyad's proposal.

"International forces tend to limit the activities of a regular army, such as the Israel Defense Force," the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dore Gold, said. "They fail to deal with an active insurgency" like the one in Gaza.

As was the case with the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which the United Nations augmented in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, any international force in Gaza would be hard-pressed to ensure Israel's security, Mr. Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said. In Iraq, he noted, groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, like the Gaza-based Jaish al-Islam, have targeted the United Nations and other international institutions.

Israel has opposed any Palestinian Authority pact with Hamas, including the 2007 Mecca agreement, favored by Mr. Fayyad, that called for the establishment of a Hamas-Fatah unity government. Defense Minister Ehud Barak yesterday declared illegal 36 international organizations operating under the umbrella of a network known as the "Union of Good." The network, which includes the America-based Holy Land Foundation, which the American government shut down recently amid allegations that it supports Hamas, is the financial backbone of the Hamas government, Israel says.

Separately yesterday, Mr. Barak announced the opening of Gaza border crossings as part of a recent cease-fire agreement with Hamas, despite an IDF report of a mortar round fired from Gaza at the Karni Crossing.