Last week’s crisis in Gaza over the international humanitarian aid convoy, the transformation of the demonstrations into violent clashes that set a fertile ground for all kinds of provocation and the Egyptian government’s general attitude show that this simultaneous claim is not simply about illegal immigration. It’s highly probable that the unwanted infiltrators are not only illegal workers but also those labeled as “radicals” by Egypt and “terrorists” by Israel.Let’s imagine for a moment that all this is actually about illegal migrants. Theoretically speaking, Egypt adopts the same policy toward them as Israel, believing that these people, who are generally from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, constitute a threat to Egypt, as well as to Israel. However, as Egypt has never been skillful at border control, as most of these immigrants have no intention of staying in Egypt but simply use this country as a stepping-stone and as Cairo is frequently criticized by the international community because of its severe measures toward them, the Egyptian government has never been successful in curbing this flow. That’s one of the reasons why this country doesn’t reject measures proposed by the Israeli government. After all, the latter doesn’t seem to lack ideas about this issue anyway.
It appears that Israel wants to repeat what it has done before in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The plans for building a security barrier along its border with Egypt have recently been released. It appears that this barrier will be built along two parts of the border, near the Red Sea city of Eilat and in Rafah, with an estimated cost of $300 million, which is quite a serious sum. If constructed, we’ll have something like a Great Wall of China between these two countries. If you also think about the existing barriers, Israeli stonemasons must be becoming far more experienced than their colleagues in other parts of the world.
It’s true that in the short term, walls do stop people from crossing borders and the money spent for this purpose is never a total waste. However, as the fate of the Berlin Wall is in our minds, it is doubtful that constructing a wall is a definitive answer to security concerns. Even in the short term, the mentality of protecting a country by walls can provoke many risks. For example, a barrier makes more attractive what is protected by it. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that a wall is absolutely necessary to preserve Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, he also says implicitly that it’s not desirable for Israel to have an Arab population larger than it has today. However, only communist regimes have so far tempted to defend their specific “characters” by erecting walls, with results that we all recall. Democratic countries generally prefer “invisible” walls, such as reinforcing their bureaucratic, economic and political structures. Concrete walls are generally the symbols of the liberal democratic principles’ failure.
One can say Israel is a country and a democracy of its own kind and that the presence of walls is thus justified. Nevertheless, one has to also take into account that in the name of self-defense, Israel is surrounding itself by these walls. It is not impossible for this fortification system to become in time a labyrinth in which Israeli citizens are imprisoned. There are many aspects to be discussed in this context. The most important of these is that an imprisoned Israel is open to threats more than ever.
