propose Anwar Sadat never rose to power or was killed earlier.
Means no peace treaty with Israel, and Sinai still under Israeli control.
How would this affect the geopolitics of the region ?
And what does this mean to Israel ?
The Sinai is one giant desert with barely anyone living there. How is it such a pain?It was a pain to administer the whole thing.
Very little infrastructure, little to no resources worth investing in. It would just be one giant military camp with locals living there closer to Egypt.The Sinai is one giant desert with barely anyone living there. How is it such a pain?
Dry desert, would take insane amounts of water, so no, not feasible.What’s the terrain and soil like? Could it be irrigated using desalinised water and developed?
Dry desert, would take insane amounts of water, so no, not feasible.
Means no peace treaty with Israel, and Sinai still under Israeli control.
Israel was planning on giving a third of the sinai back to Egypt, giving the central portion to the UN, and keeping the eastern third for itself.
Egypt would have kept trying to take it back. Keeping Sinai would have been very dangerous for Israel.
Were there Israeli settlements there IOTL?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_Israeli_settlements_in_SinaiPretty sure its been done before, small scale anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_Israeli_settlements_in_Sinai
Turns out, there were a few settlements before they got abandoned. So I suppose it's feasible, at least on a small scale.
Problem is, they're still going to be expensive to hold on to. As opposed to more fertile land around the Dead Sea and the west coast, Sinai is arid or semi-arid, with little farmable land. And it's a lot harder to defend than, say, the Golan Heights.
propose Anwar Sadat never rose to power or was killed earlier.
Means no peace treaty with Israel, and Sinai still under Israeli control.
How would this affect the geopolitics of the region ?
And what does this mean to Israel ?
Egypt would have kept trying to take it back. Keeping Sinai would have been very dangerous for Israel.
It's working fine as a DMZ, with both Egypt and Israel convinced they can get their military assets into it faster and in greater numbers if any conflict does occur. This is the most stable that border could be, I think.
This model could also work in some format if it's in Israeli hands and used as a DMZ, but you all have explained the potential problems with that option.
Third option is that the whole thing is under UN control, still functioning as a DMZ, but now both Israel and Egypt get to claim it and use it when they want to exploit the larger conflict for whatever reason, but with the addition of UN forces that would have to be evicted in any conflict. This third one is less stable than what we got OTL, but I'd say more stable than the place remaining in Israeli hands.
To Egypt, Sinai was its sovereign territory. It demanded all of it back and would insist on keeping some troops there, albeit in limited numbers as part of a deal.
Moshe Dyan was asked about the Sinai after 1967. His answer was that Egypt was an ancient and proud nation and it would never accept the loss of its territory.Egypt would have kept trying to take it back. Keeping Sinai would have been very dangerous for Israel.