Diplomats describe the Taba dispute as "symbolic," if only because, on its merits, the spat is so thoroughly ludicrous. Taba is a 750-yd. stretch of beach front on the northern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba, which is shared by Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Yet for the past four years, Taba has helped chill relations between Israel and Egypt.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat promised his countrymen that "every inch" of Egyptian territory seized by the Israelis in 1967 would eventually be recovered, but when the Israelis withdrew from the rest of the Sinai in April 1982 under the terms...
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