Israel becomes a fortress nation as it walls itself off from the Arab Spring
The renewed war in Iraq combined with Hamas rise in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood running Egypt and the conflict in Syria, the region surrounding Israel is in turmoil. In response, Israel is erecting a 150 mipatagonia guide jacket for winter2le fence along the border with Egypt and another one along the Syrian border. NBC s Richard Engel reports.
By Richard Engel, Correspondent, NBC News
TEL AVIV On a wide beach in Tel Aviv, I recently watched two Israeli men wearing tight neon bathing suits that would make many Americans blush play a game of paddle ball. They impressivepatagonia guide jacket for winter3ly smashed their serves and volleys with decisive forehands and backhands and dove in the sand to make saves.
A few feet away, a couple of young women in skimpy bikinis with tattoos on their ankles and shoulders stretched into yoga positiopatagonia better sweater tealns in the shade of a wooden gazebo.
You can buy ice cream and cold beer on the beach and nobody seems to litter.
If Tel Aviv beachfront sounds like a island of paradise in the midst of the turbulent Middle East that because it is. And Israeli officials intend to keep it that way.
While the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring continues to reverberate across the region, Israel, a small country the size of New Jersey, has beediscount patagonia flannelsn busily building about 500 miles of fence, walls and barricades to keep the surrounding Arab world out.
Keeping a lid on Gaza
Just 45 miles south of the paddle ball players in neon, Hamas runs the Gaza Strip, the narrow Palestinian territory squeezed between Egypt and Israel. officials say President Barack Obama is trying to stay out of the Sunni Shiite conflicts gripping the region, and shore up America s increasingly nervous friends there. NBC News Richard Engel reports.
Hamas is a Palestinian political party with an aggressive militant wing. At its rallies, Hamas supporters routinelypatagonia chile homes for sale chant that one day they will destroy Israel and that Palestiniapatagonia hiking boots for salens will return to their homes where Jews now live. Hamas has long been Israel s enemy, but in the wake of the Arab Spring, the group is empowered like never before.
Just last November, Hamas and Israel fought a brief war. Hamas launchedpatagonia guide jacket for winter0 rockets at southern Israel, and for the first time in the group history, at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Behind the headlines, away from the conflict with the Palestinians, life in Israel is a vibrant mix of cosmopolitan and coast, Jews and Arabs. NBC s Martin Fletcher looks at life from inside Israel.
More than 150 Palestinians and at least six Israelis were killed in the fighting. But Hamas walked away with significant political recognition.
Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi sent his prime minister to Gaza during the fighting to show solidarity with Hamas. That would never have happened under former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak didn trust Hamas and kept them weak. In fact, during the previous, and far more severepatagonia argentina map new jersey, Gaza Israel war in early 2009, Mubarak effectively helped Israel target Hamas by cutting off its border, denying escape and resupply routes.
Nir Elias / Reuters, file
Israeli soldiers watch as an Iron Dome launcher fires an interceptor rocket near the southern city of Beersheba on November 17, 2012 .
But ever since the Arab Spring reset the Middle East and unleashed anti Israel passions that Arab strongmen like Mubarak once kept at bay, Israel feels threatened. And they are fortifying their defenses.
Gaza tunnel
Now getting in and out of the Gaza Strip is increasingly difficult and bizarre.
When you exit Isrpatagonia everlong review hondaael, you must first pass through a series of metal detectors and X ray machines, before entering a long Israeli controlled tunnel.
The tunnel is above ground, fenced in on both sides, and with a wire roof. It runs along the ground like a metal snake. It s about 20 feet wide and stretches for about a mile with a dog leg turn in the middle. There are cement blocks in the tunnel so you can drive a car thrpatagonia fleece vest at wholesaleough it. You have to walk, dragging your bags. It feels like you passing through a wormhole from a beach community into a prison.
Making thpatagonia guide jacket for wintere tunnel stranger still is its quiet loneliness. There aren any Israeli guards or officers in the tunnel. As you walk with your bags, every few hundred yards you come to a closed gate. A camera and microphone over the gate turn on as you approach. You call out to an upatagonia guide jacket for winter1nseen guard that you like to advance and, if he approves, the gate clicks open and you move to the nextpatagonia guide pants ecard barrier.
Egypt fence
Beyond Gaza, about 100 miles to the southeast of the gazebos shading women on Tel Aviv beach, is Israel border with Egypt. For decades, the border was protected naturally by the bare and jagged Sinai Mountains and the open desert.
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Moshe Milner / Israeli government via EPA, file
A photograph supplied by the Israeli Government Press Office in January 2013 shows a panoramic view of some of the border fence Israel has completed separating Israel from Egypt.
