Palestinians agree to Israeli inspection of goods entering Gaza

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The Palestinians agreed Thursday that Israel can retain control over goods coming into Gaza to safeguard against arms smuggling, yielding a key point on border arrangements after Israel completes its Gaza pullout this month.\nPalestinian Foreign Minister Nasser Al Kidwa said Israel could exercise some control over goods but not over people entering Gaza, while Israel insists it must also have the power to keep militants out. Even so, the Palestinian gesture was the first sign of progress toward solving the issue of border crossings -- vital for Palestinians, who would otherwise be penned into the seaside territory.\nThe progress came on a day of two other developments -- the signing of an agreement to post 750 Egyptian troops along the Gaza-Egypt border and allow an Israeli pullback, and the first public meeting of Israeli and Pakistani foreign ministers.\nUp to now, Israel has controlled entry and exit of people and goods at the terminal near the Gaza town of Rafah, the only way for Gazans to leave or enter without passing through Israel. The Israeli presence especially rankled Palestinians as a symbol of Israel's occupation.\nIsrael suggested setting up a separate crossing at Gaza's junction with the Egyptian and Israeli borders, where goods and people could enter Gaza under Israeli supervision, while the Rafah crossing, without an Israeli presence, would serve as the exit. Palestinians rejected that.\nSpeaking to reporters in Ramallah, Al Kidwa said the Rafah crossing "should work for individuals, for people in both directions and must work for goods in at least one direction, out of Gaza. We would consider goods to enter in the way Israel has proposed."\nIn Cairo, meanwhile, Israeli and Egyptian army officers signed a protocol to turn patrolling the Gaza-Egypt border over to Egypt, which will post 750 lightly-armed border police there. The deployment is to begin Sunday, Israeli officials said. Israeli forces are expected to withdraw by the end of the year.\nIsrael's parliament approved the deal by a comfortable margin Wednesday.\nEgypt has given Israel assurances it will block arms smuggling, but the difficulty of monitoring the frontier was evident even when Israel had total control, and smuggling was rampant through tunnels dug through the soft Mediterranean sand.\nIsraeli forces discovered and destroyed dozens of such tunnels during more than four years of Palestinian-Israeli violence.\nIsrael reaped its first diplomatic reward for the Gaza pullout when the Israeli and Pakistani foreign ministers met Thursday in the neutral venue of Istanbul, Turkey. It was the first acknowledged high-level meeting between the Jewish state and the overwhelmingly Muslim country.\nIsraeli officials said the meeting between Israel's Silvan Shalom and his Pakistan counterpart Khursheed Kasuri was arranged at the request of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the Indian subcontinent, in response to Israel's Gaza pullout.\nHowever, Musharraf said full diplomatic relations are not on the horizon. \n"Pakistan will not recognize Israel until the establishment of a free and independent state for the Palestinian people," he told Pakistani reporters.