After the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman launched the NEOM project, which he said is the project of dreamers in the whole world, bin Salman visited Egypt and agreed with Sisi to establish a joint fund worth $10 billion to develop lands of more than a thousand square kilometres, south of Sinai, along The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. These are the lands allocated by Sisi to bin Salman, located northwest of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and it sees the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba from the north and west with a length of 468 km, surrounded on the east by a series of mountains with a height of 2,500 meters.
The Egyptian authorities said that this area will be prepared in the future for the establishment of the King Salman Bridge to link Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This was expected to double foreign investment in the two countries – according to the two regimes – however, the reality showed otherwise, as major international companies refused to work on the project.
The Egyptian-Saudi partnership in the NEOM project and Sisi ceding Egyptian lands, raised a fundamental question: How would Egypt benefit from this project, and what is the real reason behind it?
The answer to this question raised many other questions, as economists said that the apparent truth is that the NEOM project is a mysterious project with unclear features. We do not know why this area was chosen among the three countries. Why was it chosen alone despite its close location to the Israeli occupation? What is the hidden reason for Israel agreeing to establish the project on its borders so easily? And after this region is independent and is not under the laws of the three countries, who will control its economic, political and social decisions, and which government will control it? Which system would it be under, and what law would it follow?
There is a big ambiguity about Israel’s role in this project? What is the size of the investments that the Jews who support Israeli occupation would have in this project, and would the size of these investments be announced accurately and explicitly?
Political experts had other questions, which they could not find an answer to. These questions were about Israel position in this project? Do the three regimes aim to help the Israeli occupation state expand and normalize with the peoples of those countries? And what is the hidden agenda of the Israeli regime on the creation of an area of this size?
Some consider the current situation as a new occupation of new lands from the Arab countries. Occupation by investment not colonialism, as the region will be subject to international laws which would only serve the interest of the occupying state if a dispute arose over this project. The international laws, at its best, would not resolve these matters, it would make it forgotten or it would be turned into a new conflict zone between the three countries, according to the law of the West which contributed to the destruction of countries by dividing it into small states, through such projects.
Other experts asked about the status of the thousand kilos that Sisi gave up, was it a partnership, or was it sold for the amount of ten billion dollars, and if it had been sold to the Saudi regime with the knowledge of the Sisi regime, just as it sold the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, isthis area worth only ten billion dollars?
All these questions did not find satisfactory answers by any of the three regimes.
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