Abbas, Olmert meet to talk Gaza border breach

A handout picture released by the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) shows Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meeting with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas (R) in Jerusalem yesterday. Israeli and Palestinian leaders met Sunday to discuss control of the Gaza-Egypt border as residents of the Hamas-run territory freely crossed the breached frontier for a fifth day.Photo: AFP

Israeli and Palestinian leaders met yesterday to discuss control of the Gaza-Egypt border as residents of the Hamas-run territory freely crossed the breached frontier for a fifth day.
President Mahmud Abbas met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem as part of their regular encounters in renewed peace talks, and was to ask Israel to allow his forces to control the border that Gaza militants blew open last week.
"During the talks, president Abbas is going to ask Olmert that the (Palestinian) Authority forces deploy on the frontier between Gaza and Egypt," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told AFP.
Gaza's main border crossing with Egypt -- the only one that bypasses Israel -- has been open to unhindered passage of goods and people since Wednesday, when militants blew up several sections of the border barrier amid a punishing Israeli blockade. A senior Israeli official told AFP that for the moment Israel was not ruling out anything on restoring order.
"We will weigh positively anything that can help improve the situation," he said on condition of anonymity.
But another Israeli official said: "The idea of (Abbas's party) Fatah taking over security in the Gaza Strip sounds completely unrealistic at this time."
Hamas, the Islamist movement that has run Gaza since it routed Abbas loyalists in a week of deadly clashes last June, is likely to reject any deal that would exclude it or that would include international observers at the Rafah border crossing -- as was the case before it took over.
"Hamas wishes to confirm that it refuses to return to the (previous) agreement on the Rafah crossing," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.
"(Hamas) demands that it be an Egyptian-Palestinian crossing in accordance with new arrangements, either agreed to in three-way talks between Hamas, Fatah, and Cairo, or two-way talks with Cairo if president Mahmud Abbas continues to refuse dialogue with the Hamas movement," he added.
Abbas is due to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday after Cairo invited him and Hamas for separate talks about the border crisis.
In southern Gaza, Hamas armed forces had set up checkpoints in the divided town of Rafah, preventing Gaza cars from entering Egypt, an AFP correspondent said.
Pedestrians were still allowed to cross freely -- though there were less numbers than the previous days -- and cars from Egypt were also allowed to enter.
Egypt vowed on Sunday to take measures to regain control of the border, through which the United Nations has estimated that at least 700,000 Gazans -- nearly half the population of 1.5 million -- have crossed since last Wednesday, most of them to stock up on supplies.
Egyptian security forces tried in vain to seal the haemorrhaging border on Friday, and Cairo has hinted that it would like to restore control arrangements in place before Hamas seized control of Gaza.
Before the Hamas takeover the Rafah border crossing was run jointly by Egypt, Palestinian Authority forces and European Union observers, with surveillance cameras allowing Israel to monitor those passing through.