Unity, Liberty, Renaissnce

[Essam]

Zaafarana Palace
Cairo, United Arab Republic
27 May 1993

Djamila Bouhired sat poised, refined and reserved as the various parties presented their concluding statements to the secret, unofficial negotiations between the various parties involved in the Second Palestine War. The decade long-conflict had found its new lease on an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the cooling of relations between the American-backed governments in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; and the Soviet-backed government in Iraq and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. While Algeria had nominally been aligned with the Soviet Union, the 80's had seen the "Socialist Utopia" realign its foreign policy closer to the United Arab Republic whilst embracing democratization with the first multiparty elections held in 1988.

Bouhired, the Algerian ambassador in Cairo, herself a prisoner-of-war during her country's war of independence from France three decades prior, was widely seen amongst the warring Arab states as a fair mediator. Her country's large Jewish population and partial-recognition of Israel (pending resolution to the Palestine War of the 1980's over which she now presided) made her a tolerable enough mediator for the Jewish state and their American backers. Pride was high, but so was the pressure. The US-backed Jordanian monarchy had been collapsed by the Palestinians and their pro-democracy Jordanian allies, while anti-socialist forces had collapsed the pro-communist régime in Baghdad. US weapons had been flowing less and less to Israel since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the increasing militarization of the Saudi state concerned all regional powers, who increasingly feared a regional spread of the local Wahhabi proscriptions and exiled Muslim Brothers into the abysses in both Iraq and Jordan. All awaited the contents of the Bouhired Plan.

 

[Essam]

Al Hejaz, also, Higaz (Arabic: الحجاز‎ al-Ḥiǧāz, literally "the barrier") is the western third of the Arabian Peninsula, forming the easternmost governorates of the United Arab Republic. It is bordered on the west by the Red Sea, on the north by Jordan, on the east by Saudi Arabia and on the south by Yemen. The principle city Jeddah where the governor resides, but the region significance comes from housing the two holiest places of Islam, Mecca and Medina. The Hejaz's has significance in the Arab and Islamic historical and political landscape was the cause of the 1962-1970 Arabian War which resulted in the transfer of sovereignty of the region from the Saudi Arab kingdom, to the United Arab Republic. The region is so called as it separates the land of Najd, modern Saudi Arabia, in the east from the land of Tihamah in the west.

Due to the presence of two holy cities, the region went under numerous empires throughout its modern history. Hejaz was later at the centre of the Caliphate, before its capital was moved to Damascus. The region was then under the control of first the Mamelukes, and then the Ottoman Empire through much of its later history, after which the Hejaz had a brief period of political independence in the early 20th century under the Hashemites, before their authority was usurped by Ibn Saud of the neighboring region of Nejd, uniting it into what became known as the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd and later the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In wake of the formation of the United Arab Republic and the North Yemen Civil War, Hejazi merchants and other elites formed the Young Hejaz movement which would eventually bring the about the ascension of the region to the United Arab Republic.