The Middle East has been riddled with divisions in its modern history. At one point, they mirrored the Cold War in their tug-of-war between states in the Western orbit versus Eastern-looking ones.
The well-known historian, Malcolm Kerr, wrote an entire book on the Arab Cold War. At another point, the question of peace with Israel was at the centre of the regional divide. That period lasted only a decade between the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. After the war to liberate Kuwait, most Arab countries attended the Middle East peace conference in Madrid which paved the way to the Jordan-Israeli peace agreement and the Oslo Accords.
The peace-making countries, for their part, encountered opposition from the “Steadfastness and Defiance Front” and/or the “Resistance and Rejectionist Front.”
Before long, the so-called Arab Spring precipitated another divide following a period of civil warfare and anarchy.
On one side was the group of countries that set into motion radical and profound social and economic reform drives whose cardinal tenets were the primacy of the nation-state, the geographic inclusion of all corners of the state, the marshalling of all available domestic resources, and the participation of all citizens, especially women and youth, in the national renaissance project.
On the other side were the opponents to everything progressive who were determined to perpetuate chronic conflict. The first camp was not deterred. They set their sights on attaining regional stability and did what they felt needed to be done to this end. That included working to assimilate Israel into the region, in part using the Abraham Accords, and promoting a solution to the Palestinian question based on the provisions of the Arab Peace Initiative.
The fifth Gaza war, as I had pointed out in previous articles, was an attempt on the part of the rejectionist camp to undermine the path to regional stability and the attempts to resolve the region’s chronic problems.
The war led to a major confrontation and a dreadful humanitarian tragedy in which death and destruction are of the magnitude of major international wars. Moreover, observers fear that the war could spread into a regional one involving Hizbullah on the Lebanese front. Meanwhile, Israel has expanded its offensive to the West Bank while many regional and international powers have tried to promote a truce that would open an opportunity for an extended ceasefire.
In the latest chapter of the drive to destabilise the region, the Houthi forces in Yemen attacked a commercial vessel in the Red Sea and harassed other ships in the area. The US hastened to rally other Western nations to form a naval force to safeguard navigation in the international waterway that links the Bab Al-Mandab with the Suez Canal. The Houthis’ aim was obvious: to link the full-scale confrontation in Palestine and the limited confrontation along the Lebanese-Israeli border with a new front in the strategically sensitive Red Sea. Iran is playing a major part in this through the provision of arms, training, funding, and direction.
The new front presents another challenge to the reformist countries on the banks of the Red Sea, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Clearly, the rejectionists seek to sabotage development and progress in this area as well. As I have explained before, the Egyptian reform drive aims to expand urban development and economic life from the Nile Valley to the shores of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and into the Sinai, which is bordered by the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba.
The geographical thrust of the Saudi developmental project is towards AlUla at the northwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. There, at the juncture of these two great reform drives is Neom and other state-of-the-art urban development projects. There are 81 islands in the western part of the Red Sea and more than a hundred islands in the eastern part. Major construction and development projects are in progress on both sides.
It was no coincidence that, when the Houthis launched their misadventures in the Red Sea, the Red Sea International Film Festival was taking place. Events such as this help build the soft power of Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea region. The festival, itself, epitomises the Saudi policy of diversifying sources of wealth as well as the westward orientation of the Saudi development process as part of the plan to achieve geographic and demographic balance in national development.
It came as no surprise when the Houthis began to shell targets in southern Israel, starting with the port of Eilat (in the process, two rockets landed in Taba and Nuweiba in Egypt). The Houthis then proceeded to apprehend ships owned or leased by Israel or carrying freight to Israel, and they vowed that they would not allow Israeli ships to pass through the Bab Al-Mandab. Before long, their operations in the Red Sea escalated into threatening US and British war ships with rockets and drones. In short, the Red Sea had become another theatre of operations with Iranian fingerprints all over it.
This is not the first time the Red Sea had become an arena of war in the Middle East. Egypt closed the Bab Al-Mandab during the October 1973 War which, in all events, was short. During the 1980s, navigation was hampered by a series of naval mines for which Iran was alleged to be responsible. More recently, navigation was disrupted by piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa. The Red Sea offensive claims that its target is Israel, but it has other undeclared objectives.
For one, Iran wants to take hold of an international sea between Egypt and Saudi Arabia for whom this area is the focus of a different vision for the future of the region and its people – a vision of reform, development, and progress. The Houthis are the opposite. Theirs is the camp of war without end and let-up, theirs is the vision of perpetual destruction and displacement, and they see nothing beyond that.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 December, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: