JERUSALEM ø Israel has sought the deployment of an international monitoring force along the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

Officials said the monitoring force would help stop the smuggling of weapons, explosives and insurgents from the Sinai Peninsula into the southern Gaza Strip. They said the force would deploy along the eight-kilometer border in wake of an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

On Monday, Israeli National Security Adviser Giora Eiland told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expected an international force to be deployed along the Egyptian-Gaza border. Eiland, a major general, did not specify the force.

"The prospect that a multinational force would assume responsibility for the [border] route after the disengagement is being examined," Eiland was quoted as telling the committee.

For more than 20 years, the Multinational Force and Observer has been patrolling the Sinai Peninsula to enforce the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Over the last year, the United States, with the largest contingent in the MFO, has reduced its force from 865 to about 665 soldiers. Additional cuts were expected in 2005.

The Egyptian-Gaza border, known as the Philadelphi Route, has been the focus of Palestinian weapons smuggling. More than 100 tunnels have been uncovered by the military since 2001, and officials said the weapons that have entered the Gaza Strip included anti-tank rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars.

Eiland said that the military was prepared to retain control over the Egypt-Gaza border after a unilateral Israeli withdrawal. But he expressed concern that the Israeli military presence would be the target of constant Palestinian attacks.

The Sharon government plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank and evacuate its Israeli residents by September 2005. Eiland said the homes of thousands of Israelis in the Katif bloc of settlements would be destroyed or sold to international agencies.

On Tuesday, Eiland disclosed plans to evacuate the estimated 10,000 Israelis from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. He said residents of those areas would be given until July 2005 to leave voluntarily. After that, the military would force the Israelis from their homes in an operation expected to take at least eight weeks.

The Israeli withdrawal plan, Eiland said, would not sever the link between the Jewish state and the Gaza Strip. The general said Israel would continue to provide jobs for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.