Israel Cabinet Approves Arbitration Rules for Egypt Border Talks

The Israeli Cabinet approved, by a vote of 8 to 2 Wednesday, an agreement with Egypt to resolve a border dispute over Taba, a town on the Sinai Peninsula coast, eliminating what had been regarded as the most serious obstacle to normal relations between the two countries.

The agreement spells out the terms under which the dispute will be submitted to binding arbitration. Cabinet approval came after eight hours of debate and a threat by Prime Minister Shimon Peres to dissolve the government if his rightist coalition partners balked.

Peres-Mubarak Meeting

The Egyptian government must still approve the agreement, but this is considered a formality.

Israeli government sources said steps will be taken almost immediately to arrange a meeting between Peres and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. According to these sources, Peres telephoned Mubarak after the Cabinet vote, and both men said they looked forward to an early meeting.

There is speculation that the arbitration document might be formally concluded at the summit meeting, possibly by the end of this month. But a source in Peres’ office said a mid-September meeting is more likely.

Peres is described as eager to meet with Mubarak before October, when Peres is scheduled to exchange posts with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir under the terms of the agreement that is the basis of Israel’s so-called national unity government. Shamir, who heads the rightist Likud Bloc, has tried to link approval of the terms of arbitration with increased Egyptian tourism in Israel, an end to attacks on Israel in the Egyptian press and other gestures of Egyptian good will.

Two Are Opposed

But only two Cabinet ministers, both members of the Likud Bloc, voted against it: Ariel Sharon, the minister of industry and trade, and Moshe Arens, a minister without portfolio.

Technical teams representing Egypt and Israel agreed separately Wednesday to procedures for mapping the disputed area--one of the issues left unresolved when the agreement was announced Sunday.

The two sides must still agree on three neutral individuals to complete the five-man arbitration team. The Egyptian and Israeli members have already been chosen. Since there is agreement on procedures for choosing the neutrals, this is not seen as a problem.

The final disposition of the pie-shaped sliver of Sinai beachfront will not be determined until the arbitration team finishes its review, in about 18 months.

Taba, situated on the Gulf of Aqaba, an arm of the Red Sea, has been in Israel’s hands since it occupied the Sinai in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. It is now the site of a luxury hotel that attracts thousands of foreign tourists a year, a privately owned “Beatnik Village” and restaurant, and a public beach. Israel returned the rest of the Sinai to Egypt under the terms of their 1979 peace agreement, but it contends that Taba has rightfully been part of what used to be Palestine since the days of Turkish rule at the beginning of the century.

Ties Strained

Egypt, which clearly had possession from the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War until 1967, claimed Taba and made it a condition for normalizing relations between the two countries that the dispute go to binding arbitration. Israeli-Egyptian ties were strained as a result of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps by Israel’s Lebanese Christian militia allies.

Egypt has said that once the Taba “compromise” is signed, the Egyptian ambassador will return to Israel. He was withdrawn in September, 1982, after the Beirut massacre. Egypt agreed in principle to compensate the families of seven Israeli tourists killed by a crazed Egyptian policeman while they were on a visit to the Sinai last October.