Thursday 28 March 2024 
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US said brokering talks to transfer islands from Egypt to Saudi with Israeli backing

The Biden administration is reportedly brokering talks aimed at finalizing the transfer of two Red Sea islands from Egypt to Saudi Arabia in an agreement Israel hopes will include steps by Riyadh toward normalizing ties with the Zionist regime, Times of Israel reported.

In 2017, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi ratified a treaty to hand over Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia. The deal withstood protests and legal challenges in Egypt but was never finalized.

 

The two Red Sea islands figure prominently in the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement signed in 1979, which promises safe passage to Israeli civilian and military ships through the narrow waterways of the Straits of Tiran.

 

As part of the 1979 peace deal, Egypt agreed to demilitarize multinational observers led by the United States. and allow the presence of a force of multinational observers led by the US to patrol the islands. Their transfer to Saudi Arabia, therefore, requires a degree of Israeli buy-in in order to move forward.

 

The island transfer, first announced in April 2016, had fueled rare protests in Egypt with opponents of Sissi accusing him of having traded the islands for Saudi largesse. The government said the islands were Saudi to begin with but were leased to Egypt in the 1950s.

 

The Straits of Tiran are Israel’s only water passage from Eilat to the open sea, allowing for shipping to and from Africa and Asia without requiring passage through the Suez Canal, as well as passage to and from the Suez Canal. Israel Navy ships use the waterway to reach open seas, where they carry out naval exercises that are not possible in the narrow confines of the Gulf of Aqaba. The Egyptian blockade of the waterway to Israeli shipping in 1967 was a key casus belli for Israel that led to the onset of the Six-Day War.

 

Nonetheless, Israel offered its principled approval for the island transfer, while conditioning it on an agreed-upon solution regarding the multinational observer force, Axios reported, citing US and Israeli sources.

 

The multinational squad turned into a main sticking point in the talks, as Riyadh agreed to keep the islands demilitarized while thus far rejecting such a force on its territory, Axios said. Riyadh instead offered a commitment to maintaining full freedom of navigation for ships through the Straits of Tiran.

 

Israeli negotiators showed willingness to forgo the multinational force but asked for alternative security arrangements, according to Axios.

 

Israel is also asking that Saudi Arabia take a number of steps toward normalizing ties with the Jewish state — namely allowing additional Israeli flights to use Saudi airspace and allowing direct flights between Israel and Saudi Arabia to allow Muslims to easily travel to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from Ben Gurion Airport.

 

After the Abraham Accords were signed in 2020, Saudi Arabia began allowing Israeli airlines to use its airspace for flights to and from the UAE and Bahrain. But Israel has not yet received such access for flights to India, Thailand and China, which are significantly longer as a result.

 

While Riyadh gave its blessing to client states UAE and Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel, it has refrained from taking the same step, saying it would not do so absent a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.




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