We all navigate the same Mediterranean Sea but we are all in different boats. Even when we face similar storms they hit us differently. Those of us who have stronger and more resilient boats have much better chance of survival than those who are on more fragile boats. Although our boats belong to the same flotillas that are meant to bring us together to face common enemies like the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate emergency, we tend to consider each other as bigger enemies and devote most of our energies turning against each other, instead of cooperating to deal with our regional and global challenges.

Wherever we may be around both shores of the Mediterranean we are caught in the disputes among neighbours in the region. If we do not find ways of resolving them for the common good we will all get hurt. In the spirit of compromise, not of capitulation, and being sensitive to all the interests of all those involved and making an effort to see issues through the eyes of our adversaries, through patient dialogue, without humiliating each other we can find ways of living together and sharing our Mediterranean for the common good. Is this “the peace of the foolish” and the naïve preaching about “lilies” and “the grass of the field”?

The divisions in the countries of the Mediterranean are not in the sea and land, or on maps … but primarily and ultimately in the hearts and minds of all of us involved, our histories and traditions. To make matters even more complicated, geography does not help when neighbours occupy such crowded limited space where their interests overlap on sea and land.

Forget loving thy neighbour

The Bible exhorts us to “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” We know how difficult this is, even among neighbours within the same block of apartments, let alone when neighbours are countries with divergent interests and a long history of conflict and mutual hate and distrust.

In ‘The Narcissism of small differences’ Sigmund Freud tells us how communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in hateful feuds and mutual distrust driven by the need to stress differences rather than similarities, what divides rather than what unites.

This is not to minimise such differences and psychologise them away. There are other disputes that are big and real and will not go away if we are simply nice to one another and have lots of coffee together till we hug and kiss.

As Amos Oz says conflicts among neighbours are usually “not a struggle between good and evil …. (but) a clash between right and right, a clash between one very powerful, deep and convincing claim and another very different but no less convincing. No less powerful, no less humane claim.”

Oz goes on to say: “some conflicts are very real, they are much worse than a mere misunderstanding.” To try and solve them we need “a painful compromise” and going on to say that the word compromise has a terrible reputation in the region. “And the opposite of compromise is not idealism, not devotion; the opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death. We need compromise. Compromise. Not capitulation.”

Our role as friendly neighbours is not to add fuel to the fire, unless our agenda is to exploit these differences for our own ends, for example like exporting arms to them.

There is not one single issue in the area, from Covid to climate change, to energy and water sources, decarbonisation, digitalisation, lack of economic growth, unemployment and brain drain, poor infrastructure, weak regional integration, immigration, organized crime, terrorism, religious intolerance, hating the “other” … which can be solved by one country alone. We are condemned to solve these problems together or not at all.

Let us continue hating each other but …

In our small world and even smaller region connectivity has made us each other’s neighbours. We stress our differences and find it very difficult to get on with each other. Yet we are bound to each other and however much we hate each other and want to kill each other we have to find ways of living together if we are to address adequately our regional and global challenges.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the decision by EU countries to obtain some of their energy from Mediterranean and African countries, there is an opportunity to build better relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean. Leadership is needed by both sides to work strategically together and find common ground for near shoring and to build new regional value and supply chains that serve both Europe and Africa.

The way forward for this region is to resurrect something similar to the Helsinki spirit and call a Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean like the conference in Europe nearly 50 years ago. Given today’s divided and polarised world and the start of a new Cold War, am sure that such a proposal is considered blasphemous. But as George Bernard Shaw tells us “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” The truth is that the Mediterranean region needs détente, dialogue and negotiation, between both shores, among neighbours and within countries.

We have weakened multilateralism through division, polarisation and mutual distrust and then we blame it for being fragile and ineffective. We have deprived inclusive multilateral structures and processes of leadership, legitimacy and resources and then blame them for being dysfunctional. We set up alternative arrangements of fake multilateralism that often marginalise and exclude those we disagree with and withdraw into a bubble of “like-minded” countries and talk to ourselves.

Even when we are not friends and hate each other we must not abandon attempts at regional cooperation. Let us define and make workable at least the minimum cooperation we must have to address our common challenges. The alternative is catastrophe. Whether we like it or not we are bound to each other if not as friends, as strangers, as neighbours, as enemies.

Even as enemies we need to find ways of working together, not because we love our enemies and wish them well but because we need to survive. Even our selfishness and narrow interests dictate that we cooperate with our enemies.

Evarist Bartolo is a former Education and Foreign Affairs Minister