The Inner Cabinet voted 9-1 Sunday night to ratify an agreement ending Israel’s 7-year-old dispute with Egypt over Taba.
The documents approved were signed at Taba earlier in the day by Israeli and Egyptian representatives, and by a U.S. official who served as witness.
The agreement deals with the formalities of Israeli access to the tiny beach enclave on the Gulf of Aqaba after it reverts to Egyptian sovereignty, as well as customs, currency and other technical matters.
Those items and the precise location of the final border marker were left open when an international arbitration panel awarded Taba to Egypt in September 1988.
The issue went to binding arbitration because Israel retained its claim on Taba after it evacuated all of Sinai in 1982.
Also left to be settled by the two parties was disposal of the Israeli-owned Avia Sonesta Hotel and the Rafi Nelson Vacation Village, two popular resorts that are Taba’s only tangible assets.
The technical talks at Taba and the bargaining over the resorts, which took place in Cairo, were successfully concluded last week.
The Egyptian Tourism Ministry will pay $37 million plus a share of future profits to the hotel owner, Eli Papushado. He and his senior staff will continue to manage and operate the five-star luxury resort on a 20-year contract with the Egyptians.
The agreed price for the less posh vacation village is about $3 million, which goes to the heirs of its founder, the late Rafi Nelson.
NO VISAS OR CUSTOMS CHECKS
Under the agreement signed Sunday, Israeli visitors will need passports but no visas to enter Taba. They will be able to use shekels, the Israeli currency, while staying there.
There will be no formal customs inspection at the border, only “random checks of suspicious persons.”
The signatories to the agreements were Reuven Merhav, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and Nabil el-Arabi, legal adviser to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.
The United States was represented by Abraham Sofaer, counselor to the State Department.
Arabi called it “a happy moment” and said the agreement was “a credit to both countries.”
Merhav expressed hope that it will become “a springboard for strengthening mutual confidence between us.”
In Washington, the State Department said Monday that the resolution of the Taba dispute “proves again that negotiations work and that when parties of good will get together in the Middle East and elsewhere, solutions to the most difficult problems can be found.”
In congratulating Israel and Egypt, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the agreement “ends many months of often difficult negotiations. Their successful outcome is a tribute to the serious and statesman-like approach adopted by the two parties.”
Israel’s Inner Cabinet, the government’s top policy-making body, consists of five Likud and five Labor ministers. Its approval of the Taba agreements was a foregone conclusion.
The only dissenting vote was cast by Likud hard-liner Ariel Sharon, the minister of industry and trade.
Israel promised to pull out of Taba as soon as possible after the agreement was signed. It specifies that the territory is to revert to Egyptian sovereignty by March 15, but Israel is expected to relinquish it before then.
(JTA Washington corresondent Howard Rosenberg contributed to this story.)
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