January 31, 2008
Israel and its neighbors appear to be questioning Robert Frost’s famous verse “Good fences make good neighbors.” In the Middle East, at least, fences ultimately do the precise opposite.
First, it was the “Good Fence” erected along the Israeli-Lebanese border. It was supposed to facilitate the entry of Lebanese Christians seeking work in northern Israel; it eventually failed. Then, it was the “fence” erected by Israel throughout the West Bank to prevent or reduce the flow of contraband and suicide bombers into Israel; it has succeeded but with enormous costs in goodwill between the neighbors.
Now, it is the “fence” between Gaza and Egypt, which was intended, among other things, to restrict the flow of weapons to Hamas. It, too, has now broken down.
Curiously, the failure of the Gaza-Egypt fence to maintain “good neighbors” between two groups of Arabs has cast a further pall on the persistent conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The recent events in Gaza saw the Egyptian constabulary and military forces merely stand aside as the Palestinian forces of Hamas bulldozed the fence between Gaza and Egypt.
The Egyptian reaction or non-reaction suggested a number of possibilities, none mutually exclusive. First, the Egyptian authorities have a major security problem on the ground at the border. Second, the management of Egyptian civilian and military security troops appears to be grossly lacking. Third, the growing influence of radical Islamic forces (the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) is undermining any effort by President Hosni Mubarak to assert a firmer control against their Palestinian allies, Hamas.
Egypt clearly could have diverted military manpower to counter a Hamas force if it had wanted to do so. Egypt can stop border crossings, it can restrict the flow of weapons into Gaza, and it can effectively assist Israel and the international Quartet in bringing Fatah and Hamas forces together. The unwillingness of Cairo to confront Hamas clearly demonstrates, at least on one level, the weakness and vulnerability of Mubarak.
For Israel, Hamas’ successful breach of the wall into Egypt presents evidence of the inability or the unwillingness of Arab leaders to rein in radical Hamas forces, lest there be a spillover into their own countries. Now radicals are toying with Egypt and Lebanon; next it could be Jordan.
Rather than having developed years ago an arrangement to provide the Palestinians in Gaza with basic resources such as fuel, electricity, food, and medicine, the Egyptians and the entire Arab world disassociated themselves from the Gazans and placed responsibility — and blame — to care and provide for them on the Israelis.
In the same way, for 60 years the Arab world left the care and support for Arabs in refugee camps throughout the Arab world in the hands of the United Nations Relief Works Agency. Now, with Israel reeling from the nonending barrage of Kassam missiles being directed indiscriminately at Israel by Hamas forces in Gaza, the world community is energized at the “humanitarian outrage” of Israel’s actions in cutting supplies of fuel and electricity from Gaza.
Without minimizing the human hardships that persist in Gaza, the only united tactical agreement in the Arab world is the willingness to blame the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on Israel.
If Hamas forces are able to effectively maintain a breakout from Gaza and organize themselves in the Sinai Desert, the entire Israeli border with Egypt, quiet for years, suddenly becomes vulnerable. While there are only a few settlements along the Egyptian border south until the city of Eilat, all of these communities could become the new Sderot, with radical forces attacking from Sinai.
In addition, the breached wall undoubtedly provided the militants with an opportunity to expand and resupply their forces with additional rockets and weapons to be used against settlements in southern Israel.
President Bush’s peace initiative seems stillborn. Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas appear helpless to deal with Hamas aggression. Israel suddenly appears vulnerable to a potential new source of violence.
Despite verbal agreements to proceed with Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the entire initiative appears to be on life support. The citizens of Gaza continue to be pawns within an Arab world more interested in using them than helping them. Finally, Israelis await the fallout from the Winograd Commission report to discover if the Olmert government can even remain viable.
All of this occurs because too many people in the Middle East do not trust the wisdom of Robert Frost, that “good fences [can actually] make good neighbors.”