Tiran Islands – Israel’s future Diego Garcia on Saudi soil?

Tiran Islands – Israel’s future Diego Garcia on Saudi soil?

This investigative story sheds light over Israeli Occupation on Saudi territories and raises questions over Saudi silence since 1967.

While trying to explore the kingdom  from my home base  at  the  spectacular port city of Duba,  in the Northern Saudi Arabia,  I never realized that less than 100 kilometers from my home there lay two islands of extreme strategic importance in the Red sea at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba.  These coral reef Islands Sanafir and Tiran, totalling 113 square Km are located at the Strait of Tiran  lying between  the  Sinai  Peninsula  and Tabuk province.  The control of the two islands, labelled by Google and Saudi official maps as Saudi territory, is shrouded in mystery and it is said that they are virtually   controlled by Israel.  It is worth noting that many web links about the controlling body of the islands in Strait of Tiran are dead or inaccessible.

The six kilometer wide Strait of Tiran at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba is of vital importance for Israel as ninety percent of Israeli oil traffic passes through it.  The strait also provides Israel and Jordan access to the Indian Ocean through their ports of Eilat and Aqaba respectively. Yet the strait with the strategic location is much more than just an inlet to the Red Sea.  According to defence analysts, whoever controls the strait can dominate the region and the Islands can possibly play the role of future military bases.

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia had temporarily handed over the islands to Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.  With the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, both the islands were occupied by Israel along with the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and areas west of the Jordan River. What makes the story enigmatic  is the fact that since  the ceasefire after the 6 Day  war, while paradoxically  both Saudi Arabia and Egypt had claimed the Islands belonged to the other side it is actually Israel which  is controlling  them  by a de facto occupation.

When Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel in 1978 at Camp David without consulting the Palestinians, which earned him a Nobel Peace prize, he had refused to include these two islands in the agreement, arguing that they belonged to Saudi Arabia.  Yet Saudi Arabia remained silent. It was agreed that Israel end its occupation of the two islands and that they be administered by the United Nations but in reality that never happened and Israel still continues to occupy them. 

In compliance with the Camp David accord, a multi-national UN force must be stationed to monitor the interests of all parties concerned, but the facts on the ground suggest that the limited presence of American and Egyptian troops protect the interests of Israel only in the region through the occupation of Saudi territory.

The peculiar Egyptian and Saudi response to the Israeli occupation brooks the question, has the USA possibly brokered  a covert deal to secure Israeli control of the Island as till today  the former have not shown any reaction over the violation of  their international borders.  Saudi Arabia has not even claimed their sovereignty in past four decades let alone taking their case to international forums to recover them.  

  

After the El-Salam maritime ship disaster in the Red Sea between Tabuk province and the Egyptian port of Safaga that took over 1000 lives in 2006, Egypt and Saudi Arabia revived an earlier  shelved  18 year old Red Sea bridge project to connect Egypt and Saudi Arabia, initially worked out in 1988. The project, linking Ras Humaid in the Northern Saudi province of Tabuk and Sinai Peninsula, was suspended in 2005 by the Hosni Mubarak government, due to security concerns voiced by Israel.  Lately, prior to his removal from the power,  Mohamed Morsi administration was keen in finalizing plans for the project in 2012 and 2013 with their Saudi counterparts.

The massive project costing 5 billion dollars will have huge positive impact on the economies of both countries.  It will  not only provide a direct land route to millions of Muslim pilgrims and Egyptian employees in the Arabian Peninsula  but  will  also significantly increase the number of pilgrims and Saudi tourists  bringing prosperity  and economic gains on both sides.  The annual toll from the proposed project is estimated to be about five billion dollars i.e. the expected cost of building the bridge.   According to official estimates, the bridge would increase trade by more than 300 percent creating thousands of jobs on both sides and generating revenues of US$4.2bn annually to more than US$13bn in two years.  However, the project is opposed by some environmentalist because it may pose a danger for Red sea corals.

It is worth mentioning that for reasons difficult to conjecture both Israel and Jordan have opposed the project, with Israel insisting that it would pose a major hindrance to their ships navigating through the Strait.  Israel has intimated that the bridge passing through Island of Tiran could be a cause of war, as  it  views it as a strategic obstacle for Israeli traffic to and from the Port of Eilat.  Article V of the Camp David Accords  provides for the right of freedom of navigation through the Strait of Tiran. However, according to political analysts, closure of the Gulf for Israel is out of question, because any land development will ensure navigation of the ships, so Israel’s opposition to the project is baseless. 

Yet it remains a mystery why Saudi Arabia and Egypt are meekly tolerating the Israeli occupation of the islands.  It seems that the Israeli occupation of these two strategic chunks of real estate has been secured through some covert agreement acceptable to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  Israeli military presence in such a strategic location may have serious consequences for the future security of the Arab world.   The secrecy surrounding the tacit acceptance of Israeli occupation by all stakeholders is also mystifying particularly the Saudi Arabian silence on the issue.  Have Egypt and Saudi Arabia reconciled themselves to the location of an Israeli ‘Diego Garcia’ at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba and in close proximity to the Suez Canal?