This new year has not started off with good news in Israel and Palestine. On January 10th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the construction of a hi-tech barrier to shut the border between Israel and Egypt. In the meantime, the construction of the underground steel wall by Egyptian authorities has continued along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to block the underground tunnels supplying the Strip with basic goods and construction materials, but also with weapons. Rallies by activists and humanitarian organizations to lift the international embargo on Gaza have been blocked in Egypt and have seen clashes between Hamas supporters and the Egyptian army near the border. During the clashes an Egyptian soldier was killed and several Palestinians were wounded even seriously. Tension between Hamas and Cairo has reached unprecedented levels. A new diplomatic incident between Israel and Turkey following a meeting between Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Turkish ambassador Oguz Celikkol has marked yet another crisis in relations between the two countries making Turkish mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict even more difficult.

Israel’s decision on January 10th came as no surprise and the reason behind it is not related to the Palestinian Question in the first place, but rather to the need to block illegal immigration and smuggling from the Sinai Peninsula, a scarcely populated region where Cairo is not capable of ensuring total control. As a result of the Camp David Accords that marked peace between Israel and Egypt in 1978, the Sinai must be a demilitarized region monitored by a multi-national force. Egypt can keep only a very limited presence of military and police forces in the region. The Sinai is also inhabited by nomadic populations often abused and discriminated by the central government. These and other reasons have led to the flourishing of various types of illegal trafficking in the area, which is crossed by illegal immigration routes from Africa.

However, while it is true that these problems do exist, the decision to build a new “wall” in the Near East has kindled concern among many observers. According to many, the solution treats the symptoms, but not the deeper causes of the problem. From this point of view, Israel’s decision to build a barrier along the border with Egypt follows the line of reasoning behind the US decision to build a barrier along the border with Mexico, or other fences around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on Moroccan soil. In this regard, Israel is aligned with the ‘wealthy’ West, which is closing itself to immigration from the Southern Hemisphere and believes that it can live in a fortified citadel of well-being in an ocean of poverty. Some observers in the Arab press have also criticized the specific reasons given by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has stated that the purpose of this decision is to “ensure the Jewish and democratic character of Israel”, adding that Israeli borders are open to asylum-seekers, but that it cannot allow thousands of clandestine workers to invade the country.

However, there is yet another aspect in this recent decision by the government in Jerusalem, as stressed by some Israeli observers. The barrier along the border with Egypt marks the climax of a series of other engineering projects that have completely fenced and isolated Israel from the rest of the surrounding region. There is the wall between Israel and the West Bank, a large part of which is built with cement slabs of up to 8 meters in height. The Gaza Strip is completely surrounded by a fence running along the entire border with Israel and by a barrier separating it with Egypt to the south (in addition to the underground steel wall currently under construction by Cairo, which has unleashed the anger and indignation of the entire Arab world). Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon too are covered by fences and surveillance systems. The same is true for the border between Jordan and the West Bank.

In Israeli newspapers, some observers have pointed out that these barriers that physically isolate Israel from the rest of the world are just the exterior sign of an isolation, which has been in progress for some time now at a psychological, cultural and political level and which is mainly the result of the belief that Israelis live in a hostile world, that they are surrounded, and that they have nowhere else to go. However, according to others, this isolation is the result of an ill-placed sense of superiority and the inability to think of neighboring populations in positive terms. The result is disquieting and tragic at the same time, namely the first self-imposed Jewish ghetto in history.

However, as it has been noted, Israel is not the only country to be building walls and barriers in the region. The steel wall ordered by the Egyptian government on the border with Gaza is fueling fierce criticism in Egypt and other Arab countries. Fearing that it would irreparably ruin its image in the Arab world, Egyptian authorities had tried, without success, to keep the works near the border a secret. Hamas supporters and satellite channels like al-Jazeera have protrayed the Egyptians as pawns in an Israeli-US plot to strangle the Gaza Strip. There are actually various sources confirming that the works are continuing under the supervision of US experts and with technological equipment supplied by Washington.

If the wall is actually finished, there is a tangible risk that Gaza’s population will be crushed under the weight of a total embargo. While it is true that weapons are smuggled through the tunnels, it is just as true that they allow medicine, food and other basic products to reach Gaza. Without these supplies, the humanitarian situation in Gaza, already desperate in these conditions, would soon become catastrophic. The Israeli and international embargo bans many foodstuffs, construction materials (cement, glass, wood and aluminum, etc.), school supplies like books and notebooks, fuel, medical aid and drugs (save for essential medicines), etc. from entering Gaza. In order to survive, Palestinians in Gaza have built along the border with Egypt an underground world of hundreds of tunnels, which are the only contact with the outside world for the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, considering that even the coasts are patrolled by Israeli patrol boats, which even prevent Palestinians from relying on fishing, a traditional source of sustenance. However, this network of tunnels is also a network of death: due to the poor working conditions, the tunnels often cave in. The Israeli air force has bombed them several times. Now the Egyptian wall may ultimately deprive Gaza of this last resource.

However, relations between Egypt and Hamas have deteriorated not only because of the underground wall. The Egyptian regime has always aimed at reasserting its role in the Arab world and quickly solving the Palestinian Question in order to rid itself of a source of instability on its own border. Therefore, it has made several efforts to broker reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, setting conditions assumed as unacceptable by the latter. Cairo has also tried, without success, to negotiate the liberation of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been a Hamas prisoner since June 2006. Mediation has now been passed over to the Germans.

The Egyptian regime now accuses Hamas of being a threat to its own national security. The Palestinian Islamic movement is accused of having focused its protests on the closing of the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s southern border, which is under Egyptian control, and not on the Israeli embargo, thus damaging Egypt’s image in the Arab world. Moreover, by receiving funds from Teheran, Hamas is accused of being a pawn in the hands of the Iranian regime, which is hostile towards the so-called moderate Arab countries including Egypt. Many columnists close to the Egyptian regime have stressed this accusation. However, there are those who point out that Hamas was thrown into the arms of Iran by the moderate Arab countries themselves, which after the victory of the Palestinian Islamic movement in elections which were widely deemed democratic, have boycotted it no less than Israel, Europe and the US have done.

According to some, the anti-Iranian rhetoric adopted in Cairo with regard to its hostility towards Hamas is, on the one hand, an indicator of the fierce confrontation which sees Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan pitted against Iran, and, on the other, an attempt by the Egyptian regime to hide the real reasons behind its enmity towards Hamas. The latter represents that face of political Islam which has always scared Arab regimes, and has a close bond with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition movement in Egypt although it is not officially recognized. Cairo also fears – and rightly so, according to many analysts – that Israel is trying to rid itself of its duties of being an occupying power with an obligation to ensure the well-being of Gaza’s population by placing the burden for this population on Egypt.

The Egyptian regime feels to be threatened by these potential dangers at a delicate moment in its history. It is now widely believed that President Hosni Mubarak is laying the foundations to allow hereditary succession to power by his son Gamal. This delicate step is all but a foregone conclusion, since there are various forces opposing that step which are mounting in Egypt. In a such a critical moment, the Egyptian regime is seeing its role in the region dwindle owing to the failure of its mediation on the Palestinian front, and its reputation is seriously tarnished in the eyes of its own people, and more in general of Arabs, due to the construction of an underground wall to strangle their Palestinian brothers in Gaza. According to the regime’s opponents, it is actually its non-democratic nature and its lack of popular acceptance that force it to play along with Israeli and US diktats to obtain their protection even at the cost of sacrificing the Palestinian Question.

In such a tense climate, relations between Hamas and Cairo are now on the verge of breaking once and for all. This leaves very little hope for a future reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas through Egyptian mediation as well as for an Egyptian role in favoring the resumption of negotiations with Israel. However, Egypt is not the only mediator who currently seems to be cut out from possible Arab-Israeli negotiations. The Obama Administration has already failed once by not having managed to stop the Netanyahu government from freezing all new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and, at the moment, it does not seem to be capable of launching a new diplomatic offensive based on a new and effective approach. Another mediator who seems to have lost its own role is Turkey following the chilling of relations between Ankara and Jerusalem.

After repeated condemnations by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan for the Israeli killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians during last year’s war in Gaza, a new incident in recent days has dealt a hard blow to relations between the two countries. After having repeatedly protested for a Turkish TV series portraying Israeli secret agents as sadistic kidnappers of children, Israeli Deputy Minister Danny Ayalon summoned Turkish ambassador Oguz Celikkol first humiliating him by making him wait, then having him sit on a chair shorter than this in a room with the Israeli flag only and calling TV crews to broadcast everything. Ankara’s harsh reaction was partly toned down after the apology of the Israeli government.

This incident, although seemingly trifle, is another sign of the persistent misunderstandings between Jerusalem and Ankara. Up to a few days before the war in Gaza, the latter had mediated indirect talks between Israel and Syria. The chilling of Turkish-Israeli relations after the military operations in Gaza has led Jerusalem to state that the Turkish government is no longer a credible mediator for the Arab-Israeli conflict. On its part, Ankara has repeatedly condemned Israel for the inhuman treatment of Gaza’s population.

Regardless of all this, however, many Turkish analysts have been surprised by the Israelis’ inability to understand what is going on in Turkey and to duly steer the course of its relations with Ankara. Instead of focusing its criticism on the government, Israel has harshly replied against the Turkish nation as a whole thus risking to irreparably lose the support of the Turkish people, which is actually witnessing a rise in anti-Israeli feelings. It is a widespread opinion in Turkey that Jerusalem is continuing in the wake of its relations with Turkey in the 1990’s when all it needed to do was to have the support of the Turkish military establishment to obtain a lenient position by the Turkish government. However, in Turkey decisions are being taken more and more by a government representing the people’s will in a country with a Muslim majority. Therefore, according to many Turkish observers, Israel needs to reconsider its approach to Ankara if it wishes to have friendly relations with Turkey.

On the other hand, according to others, Israel’s lack of judgment is actually the result of its tendency to isolate itself from the outside world with physical and psychological barriers, which, in turn, prevent the Israelis from having a proper understanding of the reality surrounding them.

If this is the case, it is extremely concerning for the future of the entire region. A wealthy and militarily powerful country isolated though behind walls and barriers, obsessed by the feeling of being under siege, of living in a hostile environment and increasingly inclined to resort only to military solutions, is living side by side with a million and a half Palestinians under siege on a narrow strip of land without anything at all, and it too isolated behind fences and walls running even underground. This strip of land is governed by an Islamic movement, which risks becoming one of its worst enemies in the eyes of the neighboring Egyptian regime. This regime, in turn, is witnessing a serious delegitimization before the eyes of Arab masses and it is going through a delicate succession crisis. Then there is the persistent instability along the border between Israel and Lebanon, where an arms race is raging with Israeli forces pitted against Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement; and there is the West Bank, which, while not suffering the same hardships of Gaza, still continues to suffer under military occupation and watch the spread of Israeli settlements (despite the partial freeze ordered by Netanyahu). This disheartening picture is completed by the downsizing in the role of countries like the US, Egypt and Turkey as mediators.

According to recent rumors in Israel, the country’s military leadership deems a second – and more lethal – round of military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip as inevitable. The Near East is a volcano with tremendous underground pressures and tensions. If this pressure is not eased, for instance, by lifting the siege of Gaza and opening a new round of negotiations offering real hopes, it will burst sooner or later (whether in a month or a year, it makes no difference). If it does happen, no one will able to foresee which of the region’s fragile balances will be able to resist the shockwave and which are doomed to perish.