- Paula Rosas
- BBC News World
3 hours
image source, Getty Images
Soldiers from the Multinational Peace and Observation Force on the island of Tiran guard the Gulf of Aqaba.
They are desert, uninhabited and the largest of them barely measures 60 square kilometers.
But they could hold the key to a thaw in relations between two historical enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The islands of Tiran and Sanafir, in the Red Sea, have a strategic position at the entrance to the gulf that houses the Jordanian port of Aqaba and the Israeli port of Eilat, and a turbulent history.
The resolution on its sovereignty could be key to the beginning of the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as Tel Aviv has already done in recent years with countries such as Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.
Several developments in recent days point to that meltdown is near.
Riyadh has announced the opening of its airspace to all the airlines, which includes the Israeli ones that, until now, had vetoed it. This forced commercial flights departing from or destined for the Hebrew State to take detours so as not to fly over Saudi skies, which added flight hours and cost to the journeys.
The announcement has been made during US President Joe Biden’s trip to the region.
In exchange, Israel could have accepted the transfer of sovereignty over Tiran and Sanafir from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, something that has not yet been officially announced but is taken for granted by the Israeli media.
Tiran – which gives its name to the strait that joins the Gulf of Aqaba with the rest of the Red Sea – and Sanafir, are two small desert islets on which the multinational troops responsible for supervising the agreements of Camp David and some divers who seek to lose themselves in its coral reefs.
Egypt ceded sovereignty over the two islands to Saudi Arabia in 2018. But for this transfer to be effective, the Israeli government must give its consent.
Why?
Well, because the peace agreements that Israel and Egypt signed in 1978 and that put an end to 30 years of confrontation require that Tiran and Sanafir be demilitarized and with the presence of the multilateral observation forces that supervise the implementation of the treaty.
Riyadh wants, however, that this peacekeeping force leave the islands.
The United States has been discreetly mediating for months between Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, something that is not easy at all because Tel Aviv and Riyadh do not have diplomatic relations and, therefore, cannot sign bilateral agreements. The situation requires creativity and a certain diplomatic contortionism.
If Israel agrees to these troops moving south from Sinai and installing cameras to monitor activity on the islands and in the Straits of Tiran, it would remove a major stumbling block to moving forward in normalizing diplomatic relations.
But why are they important? To understand the scope of its strategic value you have to go back decadesto the Sinai wars and to the establishment of the Israeli state itself.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have disputed their sovereignty for decades. Cairo alleges that in 1906, a quarter of a century before the kingdom of the Saud was formed, an agreement was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the British – who then de facto controlled the land of the pharaohs – granting control of the islands to the Egyptians.
The islands remained uninhabited until almost half a century later, in 1950, Riyadh gave the go-ahead for Egypt to deploy troops to curb the expansion of the newly created Israeli state.
image source, Getty Images
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Strait of Tiran in 1967, one of the triggers for the Six-Day War.
In 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian nationalist leader, used the islands to close the Strait of Tiran and prevent access to the Israeli port of Eilat, cutting off Israel from the Red Sea. The response of the then Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, was War of the six daysin which the Jewish State took control not only of the islands, but of the entire Sinai Peninsula.
They were not returned until 1982, three years after the signing of the peace accords.
Colombians and Uruguayans in Sinai
This treaty established the creation of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force and Observers, in which 13 countries participate, including Colombia and Uruguay. Since then, some 1,700 soldiers have watched over compliance with the treaty, quartered in different camps in Sinai.
Although Egypt had rejected Saudi claims to Tiran and Sanafir for decades, in 2016 President Abdelfatah el Sisi agreed with King Salman bin Adbelaziz al Saud to transfer them, a controversial decision in your own country.
Sisi never gave reasons for the decision, but it is very likely that the aid of more than US $ 25,000 million that Riyadh sent to Egypt in those years he will help to grease the pact.
The announcement sparked protests in Egypt, and even a local court overturned the decision. The Egyptian parliament, dominated by acolytes of the regime, voted in 2017 in favor of the transfer of sovereignty and the Supreme Court put an end to the controversy in 2018. Tiran and Sanafir would be Saudis.
image source, Getty Images
The decision to hand over Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia sparked protests in Egypt.
“Israel’s main concern about this transfer is to ensure the continuity of free navigation through the Red Sea to Eilat,” says political scientist David Shenker in an analysis for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel US think tank.
His other claim, access to Saudi airspace, has already been granted.
Israeli airline El Al will now be able to traverse the desert kingdom on its routes to India or China, and will also be allowed direct flights from Ben Gurion airport to Jeddah so that Muslim Israelis can carry out the pilgrimage to Mecca.
image source, Getty Images
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (pictured with Egyptian President Abdelfatah el Sisi) seems more willing to accept a new relationship with Israel.
Consequences for the Palestinians
Officially, Saudi Arabia has refused to normalize its relations with Israel until a sovereign and independent palestinian state. The current monarch, King Salman, has been a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause and it seems difficult that, while he remains on the throne, both countries can restore full diplomatic relations.
However, his son, Mohamed Bin Salman, first in the line of succession and belonging to another generation, seems to be more willing to accept a new relationship. At stake are economic interests, but also a potential alliance against a common enemy in the region: Iran.
Relations between Riyadh and the Palestinian National Authority have also cooled in recent years and there have even been criticisms from members of the Saudi royal family of the Palestinian government.
The signature of those known as Abraham Accords in 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, has paved the way for other Arab countries to also recognize the Hebrew state and develop full diplomatic relations.
Morocco followed suit after the United States recognized the disputed territory of Western Sahara under its sovereignty. Sudan has also joined the list.
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