With regards to the first, Israel has not been able to achieve its objective fully, since Hamas has been able to fire rockets despite all the efforts of Israel's military, which has tried to prevent this. As for the second, Israel has been bombing the probable sites of the tunnels heavily and continuously and, like the rockets, it has not been able to destroy all of them. It is reported that since the beginning of the onslaught, Israel has managed to destroy over 250 tunnels along the Philadelphi corridor. How many remain functional nobody knows, but most reports suggest that at least 100 still remain intact, and that is why Israel will be bombing probable sites along the Egyptian border up until the last moment. Of course, Israel and Egypt do not agree completely on how to stop smuggling through the tunnels. Ideally, Israel would like to see more stringent efforts on the Egyptian side to prevent smuggling, as well as the deployment of a multinational force on the Egyptian side of the border to assist Egyptian security forces in destroying the tunnels. In connection with this, the US and Germany have already donated technology to detect the tunnels to Egypt. However, Egypt rejects the second idea, saying it will never allow a foreign military presence on its territory. As for the first idea, Israel hoped to extract a memorandum of understanding from the Egyptian side, in which the Egyptians would commit to stopping the tunnels. But this too has been rejected by the Egyptians. They have persistently asked Israel to allow it to increase the number of border policemen it deploys along the Philadelphi corridor. Following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Egypt was permitted to deploy 750 policemen along the border with Gaza, to be used to locate and destroy the tunnels. Of course, this arrangement was made in line with the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel following the Camp David Accords, which recognizes a shared control of the border between Egypt and Israel and that is why Egypt is not free to do what it likes vis-à-vis the Rafah border crossing. In fact, Egypt has been claiming for a long time that it is impossible to effectively combat smuggling through the tunnels with only 750 border guards, since only one-third are on duty at any given time. Until recently, Israel rejected requests for an increase, but according to reports it is ready now to give in to the Egyptian demands; therefore, in the very near future there will be more Egyptian guards to combat the smuggling tunnels. On the other hand, not fully satisfied with the Egyptian efforts, Israel is also trying to enlist the support of the US on the issue of arms smuggling into Gaza.
According to Israeli media, Israel is asking for a number of measures from the US to ensure that the flow of arms and ammunition is halted before it reaches Gaza. Some of them are follows:
-- A US declaration calling on the international community to deal with the smuggling of arms and ammunition from Iran to armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
-- Intelligence cooperation between Israel and the US to identify the sources of weapons, with focus on the network linking Iran, the Persian Gulf and Sudan.
-- An international maritime effort along the smuggling routes to find ships carrying arms and ammunition to the Gaza Strip, possibly with the involvement of NATO.
-- Plans for the economic development of Rafah, with particular emphasis on the Bedouin population to undercut any financial motivation to build and operate tunnels.
These are the developments with regards to arms and tunnels, and they demonstrate clearly that they will be a major condition of any cease-fire, because Israel vows it will not stop until they are dealt with.
Benzer Haberler 
