Shorts: Mideast

Egypt to secure Gaza border

jerusalem (jta) | Israel announced that Egypt will secure the southern border of the Gaza Strip.

The Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv said this week that, after months of negotiations, Israel has agreed to hand over control of the buffer zone on the Gaza-Egypt border to the Egyptian military.

Around 750 Egyptian troops are expected to be deployed along the eight-mile frontier to stop arms smuggling from the Sinai Desert to Palestinian terrorist groups.

Israel hopes the handover will help persuade the world that it has relinquished all control over Gaza. But some Israeli security experts, including the chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz, have denounced the move, saying it effectively rescinds a clause in the 1979 Camp David peace accord with Egypt requiring that the Sinai be demilitarized.




A 'Yad Vashem'

for Gaza Strip?

jerusalem (jta) | Anti-withdrawal rabbis have raised an uproar in Israel with a plan to establish a Yad Vashem-style memorial to the Gaza Strip withdrawal.

Rabbis David Druckman and Shalom Wolpa said this week that their museum — bearing the same name as the famed Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem — would be a testament to the "crime" of the evacuation of 9,000 settlers from Gaza and the northern West Bank.

Yad Vashem denounced the plan as "outrageous," as did Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who heads the Shinui Party.




Gaza pets also evacuated

jerusalem (jta) | Israeli officials said they had recovered one-third of the pets left behind by settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip.

The officials said last week that around 100 pets — including an iguana, a donkey, various birds, turtles, dogs and cats — had been located in the ruins of Gaza settlements, while another 200 were believed to be still at large.

The government had promised to locate all of the hapless creatures and reunite them with their owners. Pets that go unclaimed will be put up for adoption.




Ex-settlers build camp in Tel Aviv

jerusalem (jta) | Some former residents of the Gaza Strip set up a tent camp near Tel Aviv.

Some of the estimated 60 people in the tent camp said they preferred to stay there rather than in dormitories in Jerusalem, while others said they would stay until they could move en masse to a kibbutz in southern Israel.




Israeli refusenik demoted in IDF

jerusalem (jta) | An Israeli combat soldier who was jailed for refusing to evacuate Gaza Strip settlers was reassigned to menial duties.

Avi Bieber, a U.S.-born corporal in the Combat Engineering Corps, was jailed for 56 days after refusing evacuation orders in June. He ended his sentence in the stockade this month and was reassigned to menial tasks such as cleaning and other errands, military sources said.




Rocket lands in Eilat

jerusalem (jta) | A Katyusha rocket, one of three launched from Jordan, landed near the Eilat airport.

The rocket created a crater on a local road last week although it did not explode.

Another rocket landed near a U.S. Navy battleship docked in Aqaba, Jordan, killing a Jordanian soldier. No Americans were hurt in the incident. Jordanian and Israeli police are cooperating in the investigation.

The rockets were launched from a warehouse that had been rented by four people holding Egyptian and Iraqi citizenship, the Associated Press reported. An al-Qaida linked group claimed responsibility for the attack on the Internet.




Pork-like fish deemed kosher

jerusalem (jta) | A kosher fish that ancient Jewish sages said tastes like pork has arrived in Israel.

The shabut, which is mentioned in the Talmud as having a pig-like taste, was shipped from Iran in formaldehyde by Israeli academics with the help of an Iranian liaison, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The medieval commentator Rashi noted that the shabut's brain tastes like pig and that the fish could serve as a potential alternative for kosher keepers who want to taste the "other white meat." The shabut, whose scientific nomenclature is Barbus grybus, also inhabits rivers in Iraq and Syria. Some Israeli fish farmers are considering breeding the fish.




Award-winning Israeli poet kills self

jerusalem (jta) | Dalia Ravikovitch, an Israeli writer and a former recipient of the Israel Prize, died last week at 69 after committing suicide.

"Dalia Ravikovitch is one of the main pillars of Hebrew poetry," wrote the committee that decided to award her the Israel Prize in 1999, according to Ha'aretz. "Her poems are a personal testament of solitude, forbidden love and a desperate struggle for existence, while at the same time expressing universal truths and the experiences of many."

Ravikovitch reportedly suffered from clinical depression and had attempted suicide in the past.