Lawyers reignite fight against govt’s transfer of Tiran, Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia

A group of 57 lawyers filed a petition on Saturday to reignite a legal dispute dating back to 2016 over the government’s decision to transfer sovereignty of the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia, according to participating lawyer Ali Ayoub, who spoke to Mada Masr.

The decision ignited an outcry at the time, prompting civil protests, a lengthy legal dispute over the constitutionality of the move and a judicial crisis over which court system was competent to determine the decision's legitimacy.

Public discourse re-centered around the two islands after Mada Masr reported on Wednesday that Egypt is under pressure to finalize the islands’ transfer to pave the way for the US to establish a military base in the Red Sea.

Tiran and Sanafir sit in a strategic position in the Straits of Tiran, a narrow sea passage between Sinai and the Arabian peninsulas that connects the Gulf of Aqaba to the Red Sea, providing maritime access to Jordan’s Aqaba port and Israel’s port of Eilat.

The new legal appeal, which Mada Masr reviewed, refers to a “circulating report that Saudi Arabia is pressuring to allow the establishment of American military bases on Tiran and Sanafir.” It calls on the First Circuit for Rights and Freedoms at the State Council Administrative Court in Cairo to accept its appeal and urgently suspend the implementation of the 2016 decision that approved the Egypt-Saudi Arabia agreement.

Although the agreement on the islands was signed in August 2016 and sealed and delivered by both the House of Representatives and the president, Cairo is yet to finalize the transfer.

Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia has offered to host an American military base on the islands to allow the US to secure and monitor shipping through the Suez Canal, according to diplomatic sources who spoke to Mada Masr in April. While Egypt has so far resisted pressures to finalize the ownership transfer, some officials said that Cairo may not be in a position to outright reject the Saudi proposal.

The lawyers are requesting that the court annul the 2017 presidential decree which was published in the Official Gazette the following year, along with all resulting consequences, to ensure that Tiran and Sanafir remain under Egyptian sovereignty and are not described in any way as belonging to another state.

They argue in the petition that the 2016 decisions were unconstitutional, violating Article 151, which requires matters of sovereignty to be subject to a national referendum and their ratification approved by a definite majority. The Constitution also prohibits the signing of any treaty that contravenes its provisions or results in the ceding of any part of the state’s territory.

Earlier legal battles that sought to challenge the decision were met with a degree of recognition, with the administrative court ruling to annul the prime minister’s signing of the deal on the basis that it involved relinquishing part of Egyptian territory. The ruling was upheld after another round of litigation the following year, but was ultimately overturned by the Cairo Court of Urgent Matters, which established the agreement’s validity.

In June 2017, the State Lawsuits Authority filed a case of conflicting rulings with the Supreme Constitutional Court, requesting it to determine which ruling should be enforced. The court subsequently suspended the implementation of all prior verdicts related to the agreement, stating that the courts involved lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

The constitutional court reasoned at the time that oversight of decisions related to treaties and political acts falls within the shared and reciprocal oversight of the executive and legislative branches — represented by the House of Representatives — according to a summary of the case’s legal reasoning.