Cairo: A bridge planned to link Egypt and Saudi Arabia over the Red Sea is set to take ties between both Arab countries to unprecedented heights and boost regional links, experts have predicted.
“This bridge is a dream coming true,” said Ahmad Balba, a member of the non-governmental Businessmen Association.
“It will dramatically increase trade and tourist traffic particularly from Saudi Arabia to Egypt,” he said. “It will also facilitate land journeys for pilgrims to and from Saudi Arabia. In fact, the bridge will give the life kiss to the Egyptian tourism,” Balba, a tourism expert, told private newspaper Al Watan.
Tourism, a main foreign currency earner for Egypt, has borne the brunt of the political turmoil and security breakdown that has hit the country in the years that followed the 2011 uprising.
“The facilities expected to be provided by the Egyptian government to boost benefits from this bridge will encourage investors to set up projects in nearby areas,” Balba said.
“The bridge will also encourage family tourism to Egypt not only from Saudi Arabia but from other Gulf countries as well, making use of the shortened distance of the road.”
Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz announced the construction of the bridge during a landmark visit to Egypt this week.
“This is a historic step that will bring about a great qualitative leap in trade exchange between the two countries,” King Salman said in Cairo. Trade between Egypt and Saudi Arabia reached $4.9 billion (Dh17.99 billion) last year, according to official figures.
The bridge is envisaged to stretch from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to the northern Saudi area of Tabuk for around 23 kilometres. A car journey on the bridge is expected to take about 20 minutes.
The Egyptian government has said it will start soon conducting preliminary studies on the project. “The exact cost and implementation duration will be determined by the studies,” said Egyptian Transport Minister Jalal Saeed.
Some experts have estimated that the bridge will cost around $3 billion and will take some three years to complete.
The project was first floated in 1988, but was put on hold allegedly for fears of potential environmental impact on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm Al Shaikh, a favourite spot for the then president Hosni Mubarak.
“The idea of the project is based on connecting Asia and Africa, a matter that lends the bridge a regional importance and raises expectations about its benefits,” said Jamil Ebrahim, a transport expert.
“The bridge will facilitate the traffic between the Arab Gulf and North Africa,” Ebrahim told Gulf News.
He said the bridge will add value to a major trade and logistics project being undertaken in Egypt’s Suez Canal zone. “The bridge will boost the land links in terms of people’s and goods movement between Africa and Asia, thus emphasising Egypt’s position as a key global trade centre,” he added.
“The project will not be a mere bridge for people, cars and goods. Its benefits for Egypt can be maximised by carrying out auxiliary projects including a network of roads linking Sinai, for examples to other cities of the country, a matter that will create new communities in the largely desert Sinai Peninsula and reactivate the national economy.”
Since taking office in 2014, President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi has made the revival of the country’s ailing economy a top priority. Last year, he inaugurated a new expansion to the historic Suez Canal as part of an ambitious multi-billion scheme to turn Egypt into a global trade hub.
Al Sissi has said that the Egyptian-Saudi bridge will be named after King Salman, who this week made his first visit to Cairo since ascending to the throne more than a year.
“Of all the large number of the accords signed during King Salman’s visit to Egypt, the agreement on building the bridge is the most important,” Salah Al Hadi, a political analyst, said.
“It carries the relations between the two countries to the level of strategic partnership and even marks the first step towards achieving the old dream of establishing the Arab common market,” he told Gulf News. “We have to bear in mind that Europe has become united through such projects.”
During King Salman’s visit that ended on Monday, Egypt and Saudi Arabia sealed a slew of cooperation pacts worth $25 billion, according to Egyptian officials.
Saudi Arabia is a traditional ally of Egypt. The oil-rich kingdom has stepped up its diplomatic and financial backing to Egypt since the army’s 2013 overthrow of president Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al Sissi’s Egypt is seen as a major ally of Saudi Arabia against its regional rival Iran.
Tiran Straits accord:
Located off the Red Sea, the islands of Tiran and Sanafir have been under Egypt’s administration since 1950 in response to a request from the then Saudi king Abdul Aziz. The request was reportedly aimed at distancing Tiran and Sanafir from the Arab-Israeli conflict of the time. The island of Tiran is particularly strategic because it is located at the entrance of the Tiran Straits separating the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aqaba.
The two islands were occupied by Israel along with Egypt’s Sinai during the 1967 Middle East War.
In 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty whereby Tel Aviv agreed to hand back Sinai to Egypt, with some parts of the peninsula, including Tiran and Sanafir, becoming demilitarised with an Egyptian security presence there limited to the police.
The Egyptian and Saudi governments said this week that official letters exchanged between both countries in the past years prove that the two islands fall within Saudi territorial waters.
A new demarcation of maritime borders between Egypt and Saudi Arabia was the result of the six-year work of a commission of experts from both countries, the Egyptian government said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir told Egyptian journalists on Sunday that his country would abide by Egypt’s commitments in the peace treaty with Israel. “But we will not sign an agreement with Israel,” the Saudi official said.
