Tony Blair was right to point to Egypt as the means to an early cooling of the Gaza crisis. Egypt acknowledged the need for it to play some kind of role by hosting yesterday's delegation of Palestinians from Hamas.

That offers some hope that it will be more active than in the past, not brushing away the problems just because they are inflammatory within its own borders. But this conflict will be a test, answers still unknown, of whether other Arab neighbours will become more involved, replacing talk with action.

For the most obvious reasons Egypt, controlling Gaza's only land border that is not with Israel, is intimately involved in any immediate progress. Israel has made, as a condition of a ceasefire, the sealing of the tunnels under the southern border that Hamas has used to ferry in weapons, explosives and money. Tony Blair gave that position his support yesterday, in saying that cutting off the supply through the tunnels was “the one basis on which you can bring a quick halt to this”. He added, in his role as envoy for the Middle East quartet - the US, European Union, United Nations and Russia - that agreement on the tunnels would represent a “significant advance in terms of Israel's security; and that it would allow Israel to halt its offensive and relieve the suffering of Gaza's civilians”. Otherwise, he concluded: “I think we're into a more protracted campaign.”

Up to a point. It depends what you mean by a ceasefire: a pause in the Israeli assault, or the much more protracted business of a durable deal. Israel has a fair point that any deal must leave it reassured that Hamas will not simply rearm and start again. The deaths yesterday in a UN school where civilians had taken refuge boosted international pressure that is, rightly, calling for an immediate halt to the attacks. Given that Israeli forces appeared to have severed and destroyed the tunnels at the moment, Israel is on weaker ground than it claims in using this as a reason for persisting. Now that diplomatic efforts are finally taking form, a week and a half into Israel's military action, Blair is right to put pressure on Egypt to say what it is prepared to do. It has a peace treaty with Israel, and is one of the few governments that can properly negotiate with Hamas. The dilemma Hosni Mubarak faces as its President is no secret, and not new: he does not want to inflame the Muslim Brotherhood within Egypt, of which Hamas is a Palestinian offshoot. He wants to be a broker, without provoking protests at home that he is complicit with Israel.

Its best response will be to pull in other Arab governments, beginning with Syria. There are plenty of reasons to be gloomy about the Middle East at the start of Barack Obama's presidency. One reason to be hopeful is Syria's apparently greater willingness to work for some definition of regional stability that resembles that of the US and Europe.

You can add to that growing Arab fears of Iranian regional power, and an acknowledgement (even if faint, so far), that a breakthrough of the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock will demand that they play a more active part than they have yet done.

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