The second Suez

I have, after over a month, finished The House of Saud. (Which is more than David Holden and Richard Johns did . . .)

Along the way I read about the diplomatic mess around James Earl Carter's legacy, that Egypt / Israel peace hammered out at Camp David. Holden dislikes Israel's Likud and, frankly, seems not to approve Israel itself. The whole Arab world excoriated President-for-Life Anwar Sadat as a traitor for his Separate Peace. As for Carter, as with so much else Carter, he needn't have bothered. Let's concentrate on Sadat. Why'd he do it?

Sadat's side of the pie was the Sinai Peninsula but not Gaza, plus billions in US taxpayer aid. By that, Egypt no longer needed the aid she'd been getting before, which was mostly Saudi. Mind, now Egypt was an American client. And the Sinai is just more Negev: a massive desert good for little. National pride accounts for some of it. Ehh.

I wonder if at work was a glance at the map. Egypt owns the Gulf of Suez. But there's another gulf on the other side: Aqaba. Jordan owns the town Aqaba; Israel owns Eilat. Besides these strips, Egypt has the western shore and Saudi-controlled Hijaz, the east. Right next to Eilat to the southwest is the Arab town Taba. As an Egyptian-controlled town it is a sleepy little place with hotels and stuff like that. Before Camp David this whole shore was Israel's.

What happens absent Carter with a more Saudi-aligned Administration? Well, the Saudis might want in on a pipeline and highway from Taba up to the Med. Closest Med port-ish to Taba is Diqla, maybe Rafah. But really we are talking Gaza.

Imagine a treaty whereby Egypt is entirely ignored and Gaza, instead, gets Sinai, at least the eastern half of it with the Aqaba shore. Saudi money rushes northeast. North Africans on Hajj who aren't in flight give Port Said a miss and disembark at Diqla. The Med nations aren't (as) strangled by the Suez bottleneck. It would of course exist mostly to serve the Hijaz and Saudis and we'd expect it to be their outpost more than anyone's.

These days I doubt that Israel would mind much if there was a small Arab state between itself and Egypt, and if Gaza were offloaded upon that. Back in the middle 1970s, Israel maybe thought they could control this highway for however-long. Although that might just be Holden talking.

Over all it sounds like a wonderful opportunity for just about everybody except Egypt and (that generation of) Israel. You can see why Sadat and Begin would sign any deal to keep it from happening.