Strait of Tiran, site of the proposed causeway and bridge linking Egypt and Saudi Arabia [source: wikipedia]
With the islands in Saudi hands, Mohammed bin Salman announced his
most ambitious project in October 2017: Neom, the so-called smart city
of the future. With a US$ 500 billion price tag Neom, now under
construction is tucked into the far northwestern province of Tabuk.
Once completed it will sprawl over 26,500 km2 and will extend
460 km along the coast of the Red Sea. And a key part of this grandiose
vision is the bridge that will tie Egypt to Saudi Arabia, allowing the rapid transit of goods and people between the two countries.
Israel by the terms of the peace deal with Egypt is in a position to
filibuster the handover, since the deal required that whoever owns the
islands guarantees the Israelis access to the Red Sea. Yet, curiously,
when it was first announced Israel remained quiet. The reason was a
simple one. They had been well apprised in advance of what was afoot in
private conversations with the Saudis and the Egyptians. As Yoram
Meital, a Middle East expert at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev, told Bloomberg at the time: “there couldn’t be anything close to
this unless Israel and the Saudis had the opportunity to discuss in
detail their relations and this bridge. There have to have been back
channels.”
But what is lacking thus far is a public statement from the Saudis
that they, like the Egyptians before them, will not use the islands to
block Israeli shipping. Much discussion has gone on to secure that
important detail but no resolution has yet been achieved in part because
Saudi King Salman, unlike his son the crown prince, remains committed
to the Palestinian cause. Withholding final agreement on Tiran and
Sanafir is a bargaining chip for the aged monarch, one he is hesitant to
give up. Cue the Americans and the Biden administration.
As the US president continues to row back
from his earlier efforts to isolate MbS and rumours flow that he is
considering meeting the crown prince in the kingdom on the heels of a
brief trip to Israel in late June, the islands once again assume a degree of outsized importance.
Writing from Tel Aviv, the Axios
columnist Barik Ravid quotes sources who told him that the Biden
administration has “been quietly mediating among Saudi Arabia, Israel
and Egypt on negotiations” that would see the transfer of the islands to
Saudi sovereignty finalised.
That gesture of good faith would help to grease the wheels of a
US-Saudi rapprochement by strengthening bonds between the crown prince
and the Israelis who share a common foe, as does the US, in Iran. MbS,
so the thinking goes, would return the favour by pumping more oil into
global markets and helping to bring prices at the pump down as Biden
attempts a damage-limitation exercise ahead of November’s US mid-terms.
The Israelis are hoping that an additional windfall will be to bring
the kingdom into the Abraham Accords. That outcome may be a result of
wishful thinking, at least as long as King Salman is still alive. But
once he is gone and MbS has ascended the throne the expectation is that
Saudi Arabia will recognise Israel. The crown prince sees the advantage
the UAE and its ruler Mohammed bin Zayed are gaining from their pact
with Israel. He very much wants in on the action. And he is already on
record, via the former Saudi ambassador to the US Bandar bin Sultan, as declaring the Palestinians “liars, cheats and ungrateful.”
The causeway to Tiran and Sharm el Sheikh may be a bridge too far for
Palestine but it is one that opens glittering possibilities for
Mohammed bin Salman.
On the occasion of Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee the newsletter will not publish tomorrow.