Strings attached

Egypt’s risky handover of islands to Saudis

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who came to power in a military coup d’etat, appears to be digging himself deeper into a hole of unpopularity among the Egyptian people. He is desperate to find money to fix a deepening fiscal mess, brought about in part by his own policies.

Mr. Sissi overthrew elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, locking him up. After having himself promoted to field marshal, Mr. Sissi was then elected president in 2014 in a staged 96 percent victory. Unrest in Egypt, which preceded Mr. Morsi’s election and Mr. Sissi’s succession, cut a big hole in the country’s tourist revenues, important to its subsistence. In the meantime, trouble with Islamic State forces in the Sinai peninsula and simmering among Egypt’s Brotherhood and other opposition to Mr. Sissi and some anti-Coptic Christian violence, has not made for a healthy economy or overall society.

Mr. Sissi has sought financing from other of the Sunni Muslimdominated states of the region, most notably Saudi Arabia. One ploy, which may in the end hurt him more than help him, was to cede to Saudi Arabia two small Red Sea islands, Sanafir and Tiran, located at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. The two uninhabited islands were considered by most Egyptians to be Egyptian territory.

Saudi Arabia has provided Mr. Sissi’s government some $25 billion in aid and investment since 2014, when Mr. Sissi took power.

Obviously presented with the bill by Riyadh, Mr. Sissi’s party shut down parliamentary debate on the islands and also signed on with Saudi Arabia in condemning fellow Sunni state Qatar for its independent posture on a range of issues, including contact with the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s bold broadcast media, Al-Jazeera. President Donald Trump has sided with Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the subject of Qatar, in spite of voluminous, long-term American military assets in the emirate. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has now picked up the task of trying to make peace between Saudi Arabia and its clients and Qatar.

The fate of the two islands is the sort of nationalist issue that can continue to be a burr under the saddle of a ruler like Mr. Sissi. The Egyptians, the 21st-century edition of a culture that goes back thousands of years, tend to look down on the Saudis, their current kingdom the successor of relatively newon-the-scene desert sheikhdoms, as unworthy of buying Egyptian territory in return for oil money. Mr. Sissi, in preparation for elections next year, has also cracked down hard on the opposition and the media in Egypt, including Al-Jazeera.

The question is whether tightening the lid will result in an explosion in Egypt, like that of the Tahrir Square, Arab Spring 2011 phenomenon, or whether Mr. Sissi will get away with selling off Egyptian territory to the Saudis for cash.