MIDDLE EAST: US Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice was last night involved in last-ditch efforts in Jerusalem to broker an Israeli-Palestinian agreement on a deal to reopen Gaza's borders.
Dr Rice delayed a scheduled departure for Asia yesterday to attend meetings in Jerusalem late last night with officials from both sides who were working on issues of security and authority involving routes in and out of the Gaza Strip, which Israel evacuated last September.
There was optimism earlier in the day when Dr Rice, following a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said an agreement was "in sight". That sense of hope faded as the day progressed.
While Israeli officials last night remained optimistic that a deal could be struck, Palestinians complained that Dr Rice and her team were putting undue pressure on them to make deeper concessions than they had already agreed to earlier in the day.
Dr Rice is keen to achieve some modicum of success in what is her first trip to the region since Israel withdrew its troops and Jewish settlers from Gaza.
"We want to work very hard to make certain the benefits of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza are fully felt by the Palestinian people," she told a joint news conference with Mr Abbas in Ramallah yesterday.
Security arrangements at the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt - the Strip's only direct connection to the outside world - have been one of the major sticking points between both sides. Negotiations on Rafah have been deadlocked over whether Israel should be able to track the movements of Palestinians through a live video link.
The Palestinians have balked at the demand, which they see as an attempt by Israel to maintain control over Gaza's 1.2 million Palestinians.
Under a proposed compromise, the live pictures would be transmitted to a liaison office with Palestinian, Israeli and European representatives, with the Europeans in charge. Both sides have already agreed to EU teams being stationed at the Rafah terminal, although not on their exact role. An overnight breakthrough would allow the Rafah crossing to be reopened after two months of Israeli-imposed closure since the Palestinians took nominal control of the Strip.
James Wolfensohn, the special envoy who has facilitated five months of Israel-Palestinian talks on handover issues, warned last weekend that without urgent progress, Gaza was in danger of becoming a "giant prison".
Dr Rice's trip is also aimed at resuscitating the moribund peace process, with meetings with leaders on both sides in which she mixed praise with pressure.
Her visit to Ramallah and Jerusalem yesterday came amid a vow by Hamas militants to avenge the killing of a senior leader in the northern West Bank, Amjad Hanawi (34), in a pre-dawn raid at his home in Nablus.
In a separate development, masked gunmen from a previously unknown group, the Islamic Army, broke into a Palestinian election office in Gaza yesterday and ordered it closed, saying parliamentary polls scheduled for next January were un-Islamic.