Deal opens Gaza borders

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a small but significant breakthrough Tuesday that cracked months of Israeli-Palestinian stalemate over crossings in and out of the Gaza Strip, which Israel evacuated in August.

The deal, which is to go into effect in 10 days, appears to provide both sides with a critical minimum of what they had demanded: security for Israelis and freedom of movement for Palestinians.

Palestinians, for whom everything from economic to educational opportunities has been stifled by lack of access to the outside world, gained a commitment to have a steady flow of traffic between Gaza and Egypt, as well as permission to start regular bus convoys between Gaza and the West Bank. Construction on a Palestinian seaport is to begin soon.

Israelis won the right to jointly monitor - albeit by remote camera surveillance - the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Equally important for Israel was a US directive that mirrored the outlook of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's: The challenge to fight terrorism is now the Palestinian Authority's responsibility.

"This agreement is intended to give Palestinian people the freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives," Ms. Rice said. She added: "Our commitment to security is as strong as always. Progress like today's agreement cannot continue unless there is progress in fighting terror."

The six-point agreement effectively tackles the tip of the quandary rather than getting to the tougher roots of it: how to widen Palestinian freedom of movement while narrowing the latitude for extremists to attack Israel.

That dilemma, and US attempts to strike a balance between the needs of Israelis and Palestinians, has been proving extraordinarily difficult for the man who laid most of the groundwork for Tuesday's deal: James Wolfensohn, the Middle East envoy for the Quartet, which represents the US, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.

Mr. Wolfensohn, a former World Bank president, had announced only two days earlier that he was so exasperated with efforts to break the stalemate that he was ready to pack up and leave. Clarifying his comments, Wolfensohn told a jointly arranged Israeli- Palestinian forum that it was up to both peoples to find it in their interest to work toward a solution. "If you want to blow each other up, I have a nice house in Wyoming, and in New York, and in Australia, and [from there] I will watch with sadness while you do it."

Wolfensohn made it clear that while progress is a mutual interest, the security vs. mobility battle will continue to be waged, a political tug of war for which he believes there is a place to declare a "tie."

For many Gazans - who make up about a third of the Palestinian population in the territories, but live on just 7 percent of its land mass - life in Gaza can look like a dead end.

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