Israeli military analyst explains: “Egypt is strong but poor; Saudi Arabia is weak but rich.”
With a flourish at the end of a whirlwind visit to Cairo, Saudi King Salman and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi signed close to thirty agreements worth billions of dollars.
But one stands out—a treaty through which Saudi Arabia will pay Egypt $2 billion for the reclaimed use of two tiny islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba.
Why do they matter? Because the uninhabited specks known as Tiran and Sanafir rise over the waters that give access to the Gulf of Aqaba, a crucial waterway and the only point of entry to the Jordanian city of Aqaba and the Israeli city of Eilat.
The Red Sea is bounded by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, which are all declared or undeclared allies against the common enemy, Iran.
Israel says it is examining the deal, and the United States, according to numerous media reports, is urging the country to accept the conditions.
There is no dispute that the islands belong to Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian foreign ministry issued a statement clarifying that the islands “are sovereign Saudi territory leased to Egypt in 1950 to strengthen the defense of Egypt and Saudi Arabia from Zionist aggression.”
For the past 65 years, the arid islands have been home principally to Egyptian policemen and a detail of the Multinational Force Observers (MFO), comprised mostly of American soldiers. President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia next week as part of a tour of the Persian Gulf Emirates.
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Egyptian media reports indicate that according to the terms of the agreement, Egyptian military personnel will remain on the islands for a further 65 years.
Israel conquered the islands in 1967, at the end of the Six Day War, and held them until the peace treaty with Egypt was signed in 1982, when they reverted to Egyptian custody under conditions that prohibited the presence of armed military personnel.
Speaking in Cairo on Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister ‘Adel Jubeir attempted to allay any Israeli concerns by emphasizing that all pre-existing arrangements would be honored, and, to allay potential concerns of the Arab world, added that “Saudi Arabia will not engage in any kind of negotiations with Israel, nor will Saudi Arabia sign any agreements with Israel until the Palestinian issue is solved.”
The islands have something of a convoluted history and a long American pedigree.
In February 1945 a dying US President Franklin D. Roosevelt met Saudi King Ibn Saud, the father of the current king, who was then nine years old, on the deck of the American destroyer USS Quincy and established the Saudi-American alliance which persists until today. Harry Truman recognized Israel’s sovereignty over Eilat, a crucial military foothold and Israel’s only access point to the Red Sea.
Speaking with The Media Line, Professor Ibrahim Awad of Cairo’s American University Department of Public Policy and Administration said that the announcement, if not the deal itself, have caused significant consternation in Egypt.
“Some people are in agreement and many are in disagreement,” he said, “but the agreement has caused controversy because the process leading to it was unclear and it left people surprised. That surprise is an important reason for the public reaction.”
Al-Sisi’s opponents, among them the Muslim Brotherhood, the April 6 Youth Movement, as well as leftist activists, claim he lacks the constitutional authority to cede Egyptian territory, and could do so only after obtaining parliamentary approval.
“It is not so much about the substance,” Awad says, “as about the fact that people should have been informed.”
“The name of the game is regional cooperation for mutual benefit,” writes Haaretz military analyst Amir Oren, adding that in his estimation, the transfer of the islands of Tiran and Sanafir from Egypt to Saudi Arabia “is a good deal for Israel in the type of precedent it sets (though it isn’t really the first).”
“Regarding the islands’ status, there is no real change, says Itzhak Levanon, who served as Israel’s ambassador to Egypt from 2009 to 2011. Speaking to The Media Line, “with respect to the larger picture, this will strengthen ties between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which is good for the region and as a consequence good for Israel. Egypt is important to us and we have back channel contacts with Saudi Arabia, so it clearly serves the Israeli interest.”
He added: “I personally believe that Israel should ask Saudi Arabia to publicly declare that the Straits of Tiran are an international waterway and guarantee free navigation. That should be enough.”
At Tuesday’s briefing with military reporters, Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced that Saudi Arabia had given Israel the written guarantee it was seeking.