Turkey says it does not recognize regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as legitimate.
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The visit saw the signing of agreements of Saudi investments in Egypt worth about 25 billion USA dollars, according to a statement from Egyptian International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr on Sunday.
The investments are part of a change in strategy from Saudi Arabia to focus more on financial support that will also benefit Saudi Arabia with return on investment.
Egyptians were taken by surprise. “That’s what made it worrisome and horrifying”, author and analyst Ibrahim Eissa said on his TV show about the declaration that the islands were Saudi. A team of Egyptian experts concluded that islands Tiran and Sanafir are inside the Saudi territorial waters.
He attributed the agreement with Egypt to the country’s military and economic weakness. It is a natural protectorate and a popular diving destination.
News of the expected loss of the islands broke at a particularly vulnerable time, as the country is reeling from a string of public blunders and a host of seemingly intractable problems. “The 6 percent increase comes as the tourist board recently launched This is Egypt” (#thisisegypt), a regional campaign, to drive growth in the tourism sector from the Middle East in November along with other measures specifically implemented to encourage targeted growth.
Egypt has been facing Western political pressure, particularly from Italy, after the recent death of an Italian young man in Cairo and Italy’s suspicion of the involvement of the Egyptian police in the tragedy, to the point that the Western country recalled on Friday its ambassador to Cairo for consultations.
Activists said Sisi is selling Egyptian territory with a humiliating concession to a wealthy ally. “The island is for a billion, the pyramids are for two, and they come with two gift statues on top”, the satirist Bassem Youssef wrote on Twitter.
The Foreign Ministry in a statement hailed the decision as the fruit of “more than six years of hard and long work”. These islands are of high strategic value because they control shipping traffic through the Gulf of Aqaba to and from the Israeli port of Eilat and the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
However, he stressed that Saudi Arabia is committed to worldwide treaties involving the two islands, pointing to the 1979 peace treaty signed by Egypt and Israel, which includes the islands.
After a period of tension, Saudi Arabia under Salman has emerged as one of Erdogan’s key allies with the two countries in particular sharing a common vision on the Syria conflict.
The announcement was not well received by some Egyptian citizens.
But in an apparent allusion to Egyptian-Israeli relations, he added: “There is an agreement and commitments that Egypt accepted related to these islands, and the kingdom is committed to these”.
The visit also highlights Saudi Arabia’s firm support for Egypt’s fight against the militant Islamic State group, which has spearheaded a brutal insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
Some Egyptians have been expressing outrage at the decision on the islands.
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Former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahy urged el-Sissi and Salman to jointly rescind the accord on the islands, contending that it violated Egypt’s constitution and could cause tension between the two nations. The cabinet tried to suggest that the transfer, pending approval from Parliament, merely returned Saudi Arabia’s own territory.
