Why it matters: The deal, which the US has been quietly negotiating for months, would be a major foreign policy achievement for the Biden administration in the Middle East.
The agreement will also enable a separate agreement with Saudi Arabia to allow Israeli airlines to use its airspace for eastbound flights to India and China, as well as direct charter flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia for Muslim pilgrims who want to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, as previously reported by Axios. Israeli officials said those steps are expected to be announced during President Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia over the weekend.
Leading the story: Israeli officials said Israel gave the green light to the US Red Sea Islands deal on Thursday. The parameters of the deal for the islands of Tiran and Sanfir were approved by Israel’s prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry and the defense ministry, Israeli officials said.
The deal includes moving multilateral observer forces currently in Tiran and Sanafir to new positions in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, as well as installing cameras to monitor activity on Tiran’s islands and straits, officials said. As part of the deal, Saudi Arabia will pledge to the US that it will uphold the commitments of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace accord, notably maintaining freedom of navigation in the Straits of Tiran for Israeli ships, as Axios previously reported. The US will give Israel security guarantees on freedom of navigation based on Saudi commitments.
What they’re saying: President Biden said Thursday during a news conference with acting Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Jerusalem that he is “optimistic” about possible steps to normalize Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Israel.
Israel’s prime minister’s office declined to comment.
Chart: Axios Visuals
Get up to speed: Despite public protests in Egypt, the Egyptian parliament in June 2017 and the country’s supreme court in March 2018 approved a deal to transfer sovereignty of the islands back to Saudi Arabia.
But the deal needed Israeli buy-in because of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, which required Tiran and Sanafir to be a demilitarized zone and to have a US-led multinational observer force present. Israel has given its approval in principle to transfer the islands back to Saudi Arabia, pending an agreement between Cairo and Riyadh on the work of the multinational forces and freedom of navigation in the straits. But the deal was never finalized, mainly because Saudi Arabia wanted international observers to leave the islands. This created the need for a new agreement involving Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Biden administration has been quietly mediating between Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt for months. But because Saudi Arabia and Israel do not have diplomatic relations and cannot directly sign formal bilateral agreements, the countries involved have had to use creative legal and diplomatic solutions to try to work out an agreement indirectly.
