Israel’s coronavirus risks are, on paper at least, dire.

It is a small, crowded country where 75 per cent of the population loves to travel abroad. Most live around two cities less than hour’s drive from each other. Then there are the tourists, pilgrims and foreign workers constantly arriving from around the world. Mix all these together and you get coronavirus paradise.

But Israel also has some rather unique features which give it an advantage when fighting the spread of a global virus.

There is very little traffic through the border crossings with its immediate neighbours — it has officially been in a state of war with two of them for 72 years — and over 90 per cent of arrivals and departures are through just one international airport, Ben Gurion.

While usually seen as a negative fact of life, this isolation also means it is relatively simple for Israel to clamp down on its already fortified borders and track any new arrivals.

Israeli authorities were quick to take advantage of this early on by forbidding entry to foreign citizens arriving from China and ordering Israelis returning from there to go into a two-week period of self-quarantine at home.

The list of countries was expanded as Covid-19 spread across continents.

This has been effective so far: despite the discovery of various groups of tourists who had been carrying the strain, as of Monday fewer than 40 Israelis have so far been diagnosed with Coronavirus.

Only one is in serious condition and so far there have been no deaths. Around 20,000 citizens are currently at home in self-enforced quarantine.

But the policy has raised a whole raft of other issues. Simply shutting Israel off from other countries is not always that simple.

What happens when the next country where the virus looks set to spiral out of control, despite all its president’s denials, is also Israel’s strategic ally, the United States?

For Israel to block the arrival of all US residents makes sense from a public health perspective, but it would be a terrible snub to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu cannot afford that.

On Sunday evening, in a rather muddled statement, Mr Netanyahu praised the “professionalism” of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response and said no decisions on further restrictions had yet been taken. But they were imminent, he said.

The other main figure deciding Israel’s response to Covid-19 is health minister Yaakov Litzman, from the United Torah Judaism party.

Mr Litzman’s priority is protection the interests of his Strictly Orthodox community, and especially its rabbis. Pesach, when thousands of Charedim travel to Israel, is just around the corner.

Pesach is also when the Chasidic rabbis receive these pilgrims and their annual donations.

Is it a coincidence that as of Monday, Israel has yet to block entry to the three main centres of Charedi Jews outside Israel — the US, Britain and Belgium?

And why has Israel not blocked the entire Schengen zone, seeing as it includes residents of countries already barred who can arrive from any of their neighbours?

Another issue facing Israel’s prime minister is the unofficial statelets within its frontiers, the Palestinian areas in Gaza and the West Bank.

Gaza, under closure, is for now perhaps one of the safest areas on earth from coronavirus, but Bethlehem in the West Bank — a tourist destination — is already experiencing its own mini-outbreak.

Israel could impose a closure on the West Bank but that would mean over a 100,000 Palestinian workers could no longer cross the Green Line, bringing parts of Israel’s economy to a standstill and causing massive unrest among the Palestinians deprived of their main source of income.

While the Israeli policy may seem harsh on first sight, most Israelis seem to be broadly in favour and have accepted their necessity.

But now that the considerations seem to be about politics and not just public health, and reports increase of disagreement between ministers and medical professionals, question marks are growing.