With Israel’s final withdrawal from Sinai now just one month away, Israeli officials believe the time is right to emphasize, once again, the huge assets and benefits that Israel is forfeiting in the peninsula as its price for peace.
This emphasis is especially relevant, they feel, in view of the increasingly common image of Israel abroad as tough and intransigent. People in the United States and elsewhere should be reminded, say the Israeli officials, of the enormous concession Israel has made by handing back to Egypt the strategic and economic assets represented in Sinai.
Strategically, as a barren and largely uninhabited area Sinai is an ideal staging ground for the deployment and movement of large armored forces. Israel’s brief history proves that Egypt has been able to take advantage of the open spaces in Sinai in order to prepare and launch attacks on Israel.
PENINSULA VALUED AS A BUFFER ZONE
The crucial value of the peninsula as a buffer zone was dramatically demonstrated in the Yom Kippur War when the Israel Defense Force managed to withstand the Egyptian onslaught — despite the worst possible conditions of surprise and unreadiness — until reserve reinforcements could be mobilized and deployed.
Israel has argued since then that had the Egyptian strike been launched from the old — and now new — international borderline, the massive tank battles would have had to be fought in the very heart of Israel’s populated areas, with casualties immeasurably higher and the ultimate repulse of the invading force far from assured.
Also under the heading of major strategic concessions in Sinai, Israeli officials refer to the ceding of eight airfields in the peninsula, two of them among the most sophisticated in the Middle East. In addition there are the electronic early warning stations on the Sinai mountains and the naval base at Ophira. The lack of Ophiro, according to these officials, must impair Israel’s ability to protect its merchant shipping to and from Eilat.
ASSETS BEING LEFT BEHIND
The return of Sinai to Egypt entails, too, enormous economic expenditure, say the officials. Israel has made huge investments in the peninsula, in oil and other infrastructure, that cannot be recovered. In addition, the relocation of military facilities and of the Jewish settlers has proved to be an exceptionally expensive process.
Other assets that Israel has to leave behind in Sinai include:
* A network of modem roads covering over 1,000 miles, built up since 1967.
* Power lines, water systems and communications networks which today span the entire peninsula.
* Homes, factories, farms, schools, hotels and health clinics.
* New oil fields discovered and developed by Israeli expertts.
* High technology and agriculture, especially in the northeast that has been created over the past decade and a half.
* A military infrastructure consisting of airfields, security roads, communications and logistics installations, headquarters and bases.
According to official data, Israel has spent $17 billion on development projects in Sinai. Most of this infrastructure, whose value approaches that of Israel’s entire foreign debt, is being forfeited. The cost of the IDF redeployment in the southern part of Israel (the Negev) and of relocating the Israeli civilian settlers in Sinai comes to about $6 million.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
