Taba's return Egypt's final step in reclaiming Sinai - Egypt - Al-Ahram Weekly

Al-Ahram Weekly

26-03-2025

Thirty-six years ago this month, on 19 March 1989, Egypt reclaimed the last piece of land that was still under Israeli occupation, the Red Sea city of Taba in South Sinai. Israel had refused to hand back Taba when it returned the Sinai Peninsula on 19 January 1982 as part of the 1979 Peace Treaty between the two countries.
Israeli negotiators claimed that Taba was part of Israel, saying that the administrative border between Palestine and Egypt demarcated in October 1906 was ambiguous and that Israel was attempting to enforce a de facto situation by constructing two Israeli hotels in the city. However, after an intense two-year legal battle, the International Court of Arbitration concluded that Taba lay within Egyptian territory. The 1979 Peace Treaty states that signatory parties could resort to the International Court of Arbitration if direct negotiations failed to resolve disputes.
'Our military and diplomatic battles over the years amply demonstrate that Egypt will never give up an inch of its land,' Moufid Shehab, a member of the Taba National Committee and of the judicial defence panel that presented Egypt's case at the Geneva-based International Court of Arbitration, has been quoted as saying.
Taba first fell under Israeli occupation in 1956 when, following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, Israel joined England and France in attacking Egypt and occupied all of Sinai, only to be forced to withdraw in March 1957. Israel reoccupied Sinai again during the Six-Day War of June 1967. Between 1976 and 1982, 18 Israeli settlements were constructed in Sinai and a 400-room hotel was built in Taba.
'The Israelis thought they would never leave Sinai. They believed strongly that it was part of greater Israel,' says Shehab.
A low-key ceremony accompanied Taba's liberation. The Israeli flag was lowered, and Israeli troops sang Israel's national anthem as they left Taba. Later, then-president Hosni Mubarak raised the Egyptian flag in Taba and celebrated the diplomatic victory with high-ranking officials and police forces.
Taba's liberation from Israeli occupation sent a strong message to the world: Egypt would protect its land using every means available, be it armed conflict, as in the 1969-1970 War of Attrition and the 1973 October War, or political and diplomatic action, as in the Egyptian-Israeli separation of forces in 1974, the Camp David accords in 1978, and the return of Taba in 1989.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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