We remember the grand gestures: the handshakes at Camp David, the signing of the treaty in 1979. The process of un-knotting two nations, however, happens in increments. It happens in surveys and technical committees. It happens over a sliver of land barely a kilometer long.
Taba was that sliver. A resort area on the Gulf of Aqaba, its sovereignty was left deliberately vague in the 1979 agreement. For a decade, it was an Israeli-owned hotel on contested sand. It became the last, stubborn hangnail of the 1967 war. The dispute was not over a strategic mountain pass or a major city, but over a tourist hotel and a beach. Its resolution required international arbitration, which in 1988 ruled in Egypt’s favor.
The actual transfer was administrative. On March 19, 1989, the Israeli flag was lowered. The Egyptian flag was raised. Border markers were placed. The hotel changed management. There was no fanfare equal to the peace treaty’s. This was the final period on a very long sentence. It proved that peace is not just the signing of a document, but the meticulous, often tedious, work of drawing a line on a map and agreeing, finally, on who stands on which side of it. The grand struggle for the Sinai ended not with a battle, but with a property settlement.