Before World War I
, the regions that were to constitute Palestine under the British Mandate included three areas: (a) the Jerusalem mutasarrifate
(district), which had been made independent from the Vilayet of Syria
in 1874, with Jerusalem
as its center; the district was composed of the qadas (sub-districts) of Jaffa
, Gaza
, Hebron
, and Beersheba
, the latter having been established by the Ottoman authorities in 1899 to have better control of the Naqab [Negev
] region in the direction of the Sinai Peninsula
out of precaution against anticipated British expansion; (b) the Sanjaq of Acre
, which was part of the Vilayet of Beirut
at that time and was composed of the qadas of Acre
, Haifa
, Safad
, Nazareth
, and Tiberias
; and (c) the sanjaq of al-Balqa
, which also came under the Vilayet of Beirut with Nablus
as its provincial center and contained within it the qadas of Jenin
, Bani Saab
, and Jama'in
.
According to the agreement made during World War I (May 1916) between Mark Sykes
and Georges Picot
with Tsarist Russia
’s assent, Britain
obtained the Acre-Haifa enclave after Picot failed to convince Sykes that the port of Gaza should be the access point to the Mediterranean Sea
that Britain was demanding. The two agreed to make Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine an internationally supervised region. However, the British were determined to question this agreement almost immediately; they viewed both the system of international supervision and the hypothetical borders as temporary arrangements. From the summer of 1916 onwards, out of the same intent to revisit the latter, Sykes began thinking about how to incorporate the Zionist project into British plans, and this was achieved through the Balfour Declaration
in 1917. At the same time, the victory of the Bolshevik revolution
and Russia's subsequent withdrawal from the Sykes-Picot Agreement
weakened France
's continuing demand for Palestine to be made an internationally supervised region.
By the time the Allied Powers
convened the San Remo Conference
in April 1920, British troops had already occupied Palestine. The conference granted Britain the mandate over Palestine after France dropped its demand for a religious protectorate in that territory. The two parties retained the Old Testament’s definition of Palestine's boundaries, which referred to it as "the area from Dan
in the north to Beersheba
in the south." After Britain assumed the mandate for Palestine, it had the responsibility of demarcating the borders of this Mandate entity, to ensure the smooth transition from the borders of a province within an empire to the borders of a state entity. The southern border with Egypt
is dealt with here.
The Firman Affair of 1892
The demarcation of Palestine’s southern border with Egypt evolved over several decades and stages. The first “administrative boundary” between Egypt and Palestine was demarcated in 1841 after the European great powers forced the Egyptian forces to withdraw from the Levant
. The demarcation was included in the firman (decree) proclaimed by Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Majid I
, by order of which Muhammad Ali Pasha
, the founder of the Khedivate of Egypt
, and his descendants were granted the right to rule Egypt. On the map attached to the firman, the boundary between Egypt on one side and the Hijaz
and Palestine on the other was shown to run from Suez
to Rafah
. It also showed that two-thirds of the Sinai Peninsula would remain under the direct administration of the Ottoman Hijaz, while Egypt would administer the northwestern portion of the peninsula. Yet the same firman also permitted the ruler of Egypt freedom of movement within the Sinai Peninsula even beyond the designated boundary line, for the purpose of protecting Muslim pilgrims heading to Mecca
for the hajj.
The digging of the Suez Canal
, which began in 1859 and was completed in 1869, aroused the interest of the European great powers in Egypt. Britain, in particular, realized the importance of ensuring freedom of passage through the canal to protect the route to its colony in India
, and so it occupied Egypt in 1882.
In 1892, the ruler of Egypt, Khedive Muhammad Tawfiq
, died.Abbas Hilmi
, his son, succeeded him after being officially confirmed on the throne by a firman from the Ottoman Grand Vizier [first minister], Ahmad Jawad Pasha
. This firman entirely excluded Egypt from the administration of the Sinai Peninsula, which led to a diplomatic crisis known as the "Firman Crisis
" between the Sublime Porte and the British government. In April of the same year, correspondence between British Agent and Consul General in Egypt Sir Evelyn Baring
(later to become Lord Cromer
) and representatives of the Ottoman Sultan culminated in a letter from the British representative on 13 April in which the eastern border that the British government hoped for Egypt to have (with what would become Palestine) was defined by a line starting from Rafah in the north on the Mediterranean Sea and extending until the head of the Gulf of Aqaba
in the south, at a point three miles west of the Aqaba Fortress
, which was then part of the Hijaz vilayet. All of the arid Sinai Peninsula fell within Egypt's borders. The Grand Vizier made no comment on the British demarcation of the border, neither accepting nor rejecting it.
The Ambitions of the Zionist Movement in the Sinai Desert and al-Arish
Theodor Herzl
tried to gain a foothold in Palestine but was rebuffed by Sultan Abd al-Hamid II
. He then met with the British Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain
in London
in October 1902 and proposed that the Jews be gathered in the Sinai Desert
and al-Arish
, that is, "in a location as close as possible to Palestine." Although the British minister did not initially oppose this proposal, Lord Cromer in Cairo
, who believed that the Sinai Desert was the best location for mounting a defense of the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, decided that a committee of experts should be formed to investigate the resources of the Sinai Desert and al-Arish. After the report of that committee was presented on 11 May 1903, he rejected the Zionist proposal, and this rejection was formally conveyed to Herzl.
On the Ottoman side, Sultan Abdul Hamid had come heavily under German influence at that time. In collaboration with the Germans, he established new strategic boundary lines in the Middle East
that followed the routes of the new railway lines being constructed by the Ottoman government, the most important of which was the Hijaz Railway
, whose construction began in 1900. This railway was intended to connect Damascus
with Mecca and Medina
to serve both Muslim pilgrims and the strategic needs of the Ottoman army. At the same time, German engineers proposed a project to dig a canal between Gaza on the Mediterranean coast and Aqaba [in present-day Jordan
] on the Red Sea
coast, which could have posed a serious threat to the Suez Canal. While the construction of the Hijaz Railway line project progressed, also raising concern for the British, the Gaza–Aqaba Canal project never saw the light of day.
The “Taba Crisis” of 1906 and the Final Demarcation of the Border
In January 1905, Lord Cromer appointed a British officer, W. E. Jennings-Bramley
, an expert on Islamic affairs who had accompanied the commission of inquiry to the Sinai Desert and al-Arish in 1903, to conduct a tour, accompanied by a small military detachment, to survey the Sinai Peninsula up to the outskirts of Aqaba, to establish some military fortifications and border posts. During that tour, two small positions northwest of Aqaba were occupied by the British. In January 1906, news of Jennings-Bramley's tour reached Istanbul
, and at the end of that month, Ottoman Foreign Minister Tawfiq Pasha
sent a cable to the British demanding they withdraw their forces from the Aqaba region. A few days later, he sent a second cable stressing that not only was Aqaba part of Ottoman territory, but so were all the areas surrounding it, including Taba
, located on the western edge of the Gulf of Aqaba. Tensions rose sharply after the Ottoman government rejected the request of the government of Khedive Abbas Hilmi to form a joint committee to determine the boundaries between the Sinai Peninsula and the Ottoman possessions in the Levant and the Hijaz, on the premise that Egypt itself was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire
, and that therefore, it would be inappropriate to define a formal border between different regions of the same empire. In early May 1906, the Ottoman government proposed a project to construct a branch of the Hijaz Railway line that would connect Ma'an
[in present-day Jordan] with Aqaba on the Red Sea to secure the hajj pilgrimage routes between Egypt and the Hijaz.
Mukhtar Pasha
, the Ottoman government's envoy in Cairo, approached Egyptian officials to reach a settlement while Sir Nicholas O'Connor
, the British ambassador in Istanbul, met with Ottoman representatives; both attempts were unsuccessful. The Sublime Porte then ordered General Rushdi Bey
, the commander of the Ottoman garrison in Aqaba, to occupy the Wadi Taba area. The British considered this occupation of Taba as constituting a direct threat to Egypt and the Suez Canal. Lord Cromer took swift action and wrote to British Foreign Secretary [Sir Edward Grey
]: "I have the honor to inform you that the matter is no longer a local one, but rather it is of paramount importance to British, Egyptian, and European interests overall to prevent Turkey
from implementing the program I am have hitherto set forth, for it stands to pose a serious threat not only to the freedom of Egypt and the Khedival dynasty but also to the freedom of passage through the canal."
With the backing of his government, Lord Cromer conveyed an ultimatum to the Ottoman Grand Vizier Tawfiq Pasha demanding that Turkish forces be withdrawn from Taba within ten days and that an agreement on the demarcation of the border be reached. The British navy fleet in the eastern Mediterranean was also placed on alert. The Grand Vizier had little room to maneuver; Ambassador O'Connor did not give him much leeway. Ultimately, on 12 May 1906, O’Connor called on Tawfiq Pasha to withdraw Turkish forces from Taba immediately and agree to the creation of a joint Egyptian-Ottoman committee to demarcate the border line.
Faced with this resolute stance taken by the British, the Grand Vizier was forced to retreat. On 14 May, Tawfiq Pasha wrote a letter to Ambassador O'Connor in which he stated: "The withdrawal from Taba has been decided, and orders have been given accordingly. The officers of the General Staff stationed in Aqaba will meet with the functionaries sent by the Khedive to make their site inspections, and according to topographical data, a technical investigation will be carried out and the boundary line will be drawn, starting from Rafah near al-Arish, and running southeast in an approximately geometric straight line up to a point on the Gulf of Aqaba, at a distance of less than three miles from the Aqaba fortress." Thus, the inclusion of the sector of Taba within Egypt's borders was finalized, and the Egyptian-Palestinian border, located in the desert between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, was demarcated from Rafah to Taba.
In early October 1906, Egyptian and Ottoman delegates signed the agreement finalizing the border in Rafah, in which the border line was described as an “administrative separating line” rather than a political or international one, between “the Hijaz vilayet and the Jerusalem mutasarrifate” on one side, and “the exalted Egyptian Khedivate” on the other. Article 6 of the agreement stated: “All tribes living on both sides shall have the right of benefiting by the water as heretofore—viz., they shall retain their ancient and former rights in this respect.” Article 8 stated: “Natives and Arabs of both sides shall continue to retain the same established and ancient rights of ownership of waters, fields, and lands on both sides as formerly,” while Article 7 confirmed that “armed Turkish soldiers and armed gendarmes, will not be permitted to cross to the west of the separating line.”
On 9 May 1919, a memorandum submitted by the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference
stated that the British intended to adopt the border that had been demarcated between Khedival Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in 1906. On 28 February 1922, Britain declared the end of its protectorate over Egypt, which was now to become an independent sovereign state; Egypt’s borders would now be considered as international borders. The British Mandate over Palestine reinforced those borders by drawing what was known as the “separating line” between Egypt and Palestine. On 16 September 1922, the Negev (Naqab) region was made part of Palestine with the League of Nations
approval. This was done to satisfy the Zionist Organization
, which had been pressuring the British government to secure access for it to the Red Sea, thus rejecting the demands of Emir Abdullah
bin Hussein
, who had hoped to annex the Naqab to the Emirate of Transjordan
.
Egyptian – Israeli Borders
On 24 February 1949 on the aftermath of the Palestine War
, Israel and Egypt signed the Armistice Agreement
. Up until that date, Israeli occupation of the south of Palestine had not extended beyond a latitude whose coordinates went through the town of Bir al-Sabi’, which meant that a territory covering an area of 7,000 square kilometers of the southern part of Palestine and covering two-thirds of its southern border with Egypt, remained an Arab land free from Israeli occupation. However, while no Arab forces advanced to protect this vital area, the Israeli army moved in with a mobile force to occupy the entire region, and the Israeli flag was hoisted at the village of Umm al-Rashrash
in the first week of March 1949. Israel subsequently established the city of Eilat
at the location of Umm al-Rashrash and established a scattering of armed settlements near the Gaza Strip. It then captured the demilitarized zone near Auja al-Hafir
on the border with Egypt, which covered an area of 260 square kilometers, and Bir al-Sabi’ was expanded under the nascent state to become the city of Bir al-Sabi’.
In the peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel on 28 March 1979, it was stipulated that the administrative separating line of 1906 would become the international border between Egypt and Israel, and under the treaty, the demilitarized zone at Auja al-Hafir was to be implicitly considered under Israeli sovereignty. And thus, the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1948–1949 extended from the Mediterranean all the way to the Red Sea.
