Tiran and Sanafir, two islands located at the entrance to the Strait of Tiran, which separates the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea, have been at the forefront of the political arena since mid-2016 after Egypt signed the maritime border delimitation agreement with Saudi Arabia, under which Egypt acknowledged the dependence of the two islands on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, signed on April 8, 2016. On June 14, 2017, the Egyptian Parliament approved the agreement, and then Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified it on 17 June 2017, and published in the Official Gazette on August 17, 2017, in parallel with a widespread controversy over sovereignty over the two islands between the two countries and popular opposition in the Egyptian street and before the judiciary. In the midst of this, Ambassador Abdullah Al-Ashaal published his book, entitled “Facts and Myths in the Egyptianness of Tiran and Sanafir,” in which he reveals, through documents, the “Egyptianness” of the two islands, which the government signed an agreement demarcating the maritime borders to cede to Saudi Arabia, whose signature the administrative judiciary ruled invalid. Al-Ashaal said, in his book published on 01/01/2017, by the Yastorun Foundation for Printing and Publishing, in 199 pages, that Israel occupied Sinai, including Tiran, Sanafir, and Gaza, and if the islands were Saudi, Saudi Arabia would have protested their occupation within Sinai, a position that did not require contact with Israel or a Saudi naval force to protect the islands in light of its distinguished relations at that time with Washington and London. Saudi-Egyptian relations were very tense during all stages of the Nasser rule. The late journalist Muhammad Hassanein Heikal recorded many assassination attempts and plots against Abdel Nasser and his relationship with Saudi Arabia on these islands. The book indicated that Israel’s withdrawal from the lands and the island of Tiran vacated its positions for international forces, and the Egyptian forces did not return again to the straits, but that did not affect Egypt’s sovereignty over the islands, after Israel rejected the General Assembly’s resolutions in November 1956 and tried to obtain the greatest gains in exchange for withdrawal, the most important of which was securing its passage through the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal and considering the truce a peace treaty ending the state of war, and it actually withdrew from all of Sinai except the straits of Tiran and Sharm. Sheikh and Gaza entered into a diplomatic battle with the Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time, and it ended with the mission of the international emergency forces formed by the General Assembly being to monitor the ceasefire between Egypt and Israel after the latter’s withdrawal. The international emergency forces replaced the Israeli forces in the straits without these international forces adhering to what Israel wanted to secure its passage through the straits. Israel also refused to have the forces present on its territory, while Egypt alone accepted in exchange for confirmation that its existence depended on Egypt’s consent and will, and this was a loophole that troubled Israel. He wondered in his book: “Immediately after the Israeli forces evacuated and Egypt handed over the entire Sinai and the islands on April 25, 1982, why did the Saudi claim to the islands not appear at that time, especially since Saudi Arabia is part of the new Egyptian-Israeli/American camp,” pointing out that if Saudi Arabia was prepared in 2016 to deal with Israel in Egypt’s place in the Straits of Tiran on the occasion of the Egyptian surrender of the two islands, “then why did it not come forward in 1982 to play the same role, especially since Saudi Arabia then led the Arabs towards a settlement with Israel after the conquest of The path from Egypt and Jordan 1979 and 1994, and that in 1982 Saudi Arabia and Egypt were key parties in the arrangements for the transfer of the Palestinian resistance from Lebanon to Tunisia in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Beirut. Saudi Arabia was also more inclined in 1981 to reconcile with Israel and the relationship of this to the American threat calling for the Arabs to ally with Israel and the United States against the communist threat, especially after the Soviet invasion. Then, in 1980, Saudi Arabia was the main supporter of Washington in the American hostage crisis in Iran since November 4, 1979, following the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, which opened the door to the Saudi-Iranian conflict, which worsened and is believed to have a close relationship with the islands issue in 2016. The writer continued: “What moved Saudi Arabia once again to demand Egyptian recognition of the Saudi Arabia of the islands in 1988, when relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia were still severed since 1979, and Egypt’s membership in the Arab League was suspended until 1989, even though Mubarak had offered his condolences on the death of King Khaled in June 1982?” Ambassador Abdullah Al-Ashaal explained 6 observations on the Saudi position on the islands, which are that the exchanged letters that the Egyptian Council of Ministers attached on April 9, 2016 with its statement on the islands talk about Saudi demands and Egyptian approval between September 1988 and March 1990. Then the correspondence stopped after that and did not appear at all until 1988, which requires research and analysis of that. In addition to that he refuted what some claimed in support of his defense of the Saudi Arabia of the islands based on the reference of one of the researchers from whom he chose his line that Saudi Arabia demanded the islands in a Security Council document. It has become clear to us that the number of the document is correct but its content is incorrect. It is a Saudi complaint dated April 12, 1957 to the Security Council against the incursion of an Israeli destroyer to less than a nautical mile from a village on the Saudi coast of the Gulf of Aqaba. The third observation by Ambassador Abdullah Al-Ashaal is that Saudi Arabia has never claimed these islands nor claimed ownership of them At no time did any document proving ownership of these islands be presented nor did Egypt’s right to them be disputed. Rather, the Saudi ambassador absolved his country of what the Egyptian government announced in its statement and said, “It was the government that handed us the papers that it believed proved our ownership of them.” In addition, the Egyptian government threw all its weight behind the issue of proving that the islands are Saudi in a way that raises questions, which eliminated any doubt that a dispute would arise between the Egyptian and Saudi governments over the islands, but the problem began between the Egyptian government. The Egyptian people and the government took a hostile stance in various ways. He added that the papers announced with the statement about the islands were presented as if they were documents proving ownership in order to mislead the non-specialist reader into believing that their position was correct in a way that called for pity. The government submitted 9 papers/documents, which it claimed were proof of ownership of Saudi Arabia. The Cabinet Information Center also reconfirmed these papers. By analyzing them all, it appeared that some of them were procedural and were previously gathered in this context to build the illusion, and some of them we doubt their credibility in light of examining many aspects and careful reading of the papers, and the rest supports Egypt’s right, not Saudi Arabia. In the part related to Saudi Arabia’s reactions, the ambassador published a memorandum from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which indicated that Egypt “has taken this measure (military presence on the two islands) simply to strengthen its right, as well as any potential right of Saudi Arabia with regard to the two islands, whose geographical center is located at least 3 nautical miles from the Egyptian coast in Sinai and approximately four miles on the side facing Saudi Arabia, and the line of return has been cut off for any attempt to attack Egypt’s rights.” He also presented the justifications for the Egyptian memorandum to prove the Saudi Arabian ownership of the islands, which was summarized in the fact that sovereignty over the two islands was for Saudi Arabia until Egypt – in the circumstances of the military confrontation with Israel in 1950 – actually occupied the two islands with the approval and blessing of Saudi Arabia. The memorandum justified Saudi Arabia by saying that Saudi Arabia’s failure to exercise sovereignty over the islands after 1950 as a result of Egypt’s subsequent occupation of them does not in any way affect the dependency of the two islands on Saudi Arabia among established matters in international law. To which he responded by saying that the memorandum tried to prove the Saudi Arabia of the islands before 1950 in terms that inspire confidence “that it is one of the things that is historically established.” This means that the date he is referring to is the period from the establishment of the Kingdom 1932 until 1950, and this is only 18 years in the entire history of the Kingdom, assuming that the Kingdom inherited the conditions of the island on which it was established since its establishment. This is in addition to mentioning some facts that confirm the corruption of the historical argument in the Egyptian memorandum.
