ISRAELIS ASK EGYPTIANS TO REDRAW BORDER A BIT
By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times
Published: January 19, 1982
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/19/world/israelis-ask-egyptians-to-redraw-border-a-bit.html

JERUSALEM, Jan. 18— Israel asked Egypt today for a slight alteration in
their border to avoid splitting the Palestinian town of Rafah when the rest
of Sinai goes back to Egyptian control in April.

The suggestion was reportedly made to Egyptian officials by Israel's Defense
Minister, Ariel Sharon, who is in Cairo for talks on the withdrawal from
Sinai. Mr. Sharon favors drawing the frontier around Rafah rather than
through it, placing the town wholly within the Gaza Strip, which is to
remain under Israeli military occupation. Israel would compensate Egypt for
the territory elsewhere along the border, one official explained.

A less desirable solution from Israel's perspective would be to place Rafah,
with 12,000 residents, entirely inside Egyptian territory. Mr. Sharon's main
concern, it was explained here, is not to divide the town in a way that
would create the potential for terrorist infiltration and arms smuggling
from Egyptian territory into the Gaza Strip.

The problem has arisen because the line from Rafah to Eilat, established as
a boundary by the British, has not existed as an international frontier
since the 1948 Mideast war. The fighting ended with the Gaza Strip,
including Rafah, in Egyptian hands. The Gaza Strip and Raf ah, as well as
all of Sinai, fell under Israeli control in the war of 1967.

In the last 32 years, Rafah has expanded across the line and restoration of
the border under the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty would run the frontier
through houses.

The matter is to be discussed by a joint Israeli-Egyptian committee,
according to the Israeli radio. The radio also said that Egypt had agreed to
Mr. Sharon's request that Israel be permitted to dismantle structures in
Sinai, including hothouses, after the April 25 withdrawal. Seek to Avoid
Clashes

The request was made to avoid clashes with Israeli settlers, who are
resisting the withdrawal and have blocked efforts to remove structures. At
one settlement, they stayed up all night welding pieces of metal hothouse
frames together so they could not be taken apart. The dismantling has been
abandoned.

Israel has also asked Egypt and the United States to agree that a permanent
outpost of the international force in Sinai be established on the island of
Tiran to patrol Tiran and Sanafir, which control the narrow strait into the
Gulf of Aqaba.

The two islands were transferred by Saudi Arabia to Egyptian control in 1950
because the Saudis feared an Israeli attempt to seize them. Along with the
rest of Sinai, they fell under Israeli control in the 1967 war, but Saudi
Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd said recently that he would ask Egypt, after
regaining them in April, to return them to Saudi sovereignty.

Israel fears that Egypt, attempting to repair relations with the Saudis,
might make such a transfer, and has told the Egyptian Government firmly that
this would constitute a violation of the peace treaty.

The map appended to the treaty shows the islands as part of Zone C, which is
to be patrolled by the international force and is to have no Egyptian
military presence, only civilian police. Since Saudi Arabia is not a
signatory to the treaty - and in fact opposes it - there is no allowance for
Saudi sovereignty over the islands, according to officials here.

''We have fought twice for navigation rights through the strait,'' said one
official. ''We don't want to have a third war.'' His reference was to the
wars of 1956 and 1967, when Egypt closed the strait to Israeli shipping.

The islands are uninhabited; they are nothing more than outcroppings of
desert sand and rock amid a blue sea. It is not certain that the United
States, which will have effective control of the international force, will
approve a permanent outpost. The force, with helicopters and small craft,
can patrol and observe the islands without stationing men on them
constantly. Whether this will be acceptable to Israel is unclear.

---- Accord on Israeli Shipping

CAIRO, Egypt, Jan. 18 (UPI) - Israel and Egypt agreed today on ways to
safeguard freedom of Israeli shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba. The Israeli
Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, and Egypt's Foreign Minister, Kamal Hassan
Ali, gave the optimist ic report on progress in carrying out the treaty
after more than three hours of talks.

''There is no problem,'' Mr. Sharon told reporters when asked about the
status of the tiny islands of Tiran and Sanafir, strategically situated at
the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, after the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.

Mr. Sharon, who is to meet with President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday, said
that Egypt agreed with the Israeli position that the islands of Sanafir and
Tiran are part of Zone C of Sinai, which the peace treaty says will be
manned by Egyptian civilian police and supervised by an international
peacekeeping force.

---- Autonomy Talks at Issue Special to the New York Times

TEL AVIV, Jan. 18 - Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said today that
prospects for an imminent breakthrough in the Palestinian autonomy talks had
dimmed because the Egyptian Government suddenly hardened its position.

The minister reported to a parliamentary foreign affairs and security
committee meeting in Jerusalem. He said the Egyptians surprised the
Americans and Israelis in recent autonomy talks by maintaining that the
agreement they were seeking must be acceptable to the Palestinians.

Mr. Shamir said this represented a departure from the positions of President
Anwar el-Sadat.