The Taba Crisis or "Aqaba Crisis" was a diplomatic conflict arising from territorial disputes between the British in Egypt and the Ottomans in Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century. Although largely forgotten over time, it holds significant importance in political history: in conjunction with preceding events, it nearly precipitated the outbreak of a conflict that foreshadowed World War I as early as 1906. [1] Its aftermath also led to the emergence of the Negev as a distinct region, ultimately incorporated into Palestine as a "historical accident." [2]
In the first half of the 19th century, Palestine, the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt were part of the Ottoman Empire, but they were integrated into it to varying degrees: in Egypt, Muhammad Ali had taken power in 1805 and was now ruling there as a kind of semi-independent vassal king ("Wāli"). The Sinai had for many centuries been an integral part of a region that also included the region later known as the "Negev" and often also southwestern Jordan and northwestern Hejaz, which, as a whole, was known during Ottoman times as the "Province of Hejaz." Up to this time, the Negev region didn't even have its own name (→ History of the Negev during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods). This area was almost exclusively populated by Bedouins, who were largely independent of Ottoman rule. [3] [4] Only a region along the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula known as al-Jifâr, [5] through which an important trade route known as the Via Maris passed, appears to have generally been regarded as part of Egypt territorially from around the 14th century onward. [6]
However, in the 1830s, Muhammad Ali revolted against the Ottomans and briefly gained control over Sinai and Palestine. Following the Egyptian–Ottoman War from 1839 to 1841, in which the Egyptians were pushed back in Palestine and which was ultimately a proxy war between France, supporting the Egyptians, and England, supporting the Ottomans, [7] [8] [9] at the Convention of London in 1840, it was enforced [10] that Egypt largely withdraw from the Sinai, retaining only the Jifâr region northwest of a line from Rafah to Suez, corresponding to Egypt's "ancient borders". This territory was then marked on a map and formally assigned to their Egyptian subjects by the Ottomans through the so-called "Inheritance Firman" of 1841. [11] [12] Later, the starting point of the Firman line from Rafah would mark one of the two points crucial for defining the Negev. Despite this firman, the Egyptians, with the consent of the Ottomans, continued to administer the waystations along the second major trade and pilgrimage route through Sinai and the Negev, extending further southeast into the Hejaz region, from Suez via Nekhel and Aqaba, known as the King's Highway. [13]
Both stipulations led to the territorial status of Sinai and the Negev becoming somewhat ambiguous after 1841: The Ottomans initially sometimes produced maps that depicted the Negev as "Egyptian" territory, [16] while the Egyptians produced maps that did not even recognize the area of the Inheritance Firman as part of Egypt.
The French subsequently built the economically vital Suez Canal by 1869, with its southern end still lying in Ottoman territory. [17] [18] However, after Britain established effective control over Egypt as a de facto protectorate in 1882, only nominally still under Ottoman sovereignty, only the British benefited economically from the canal, while it harmed the Ottomans [19] and made Ottoman troop movements to Palestine and in the Hejaz dependent on whether the British would allow them to pass. [20]
Consequently, the Ottomans began efforts to extend their de facto control southwestward. [21] Meanwhile, the British sought to keep the Ottomans away from the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba, which had the potential to threaten their dominance in the Red Sea through the Suez Canal. [22] This struggle for the Sinai and the Negev unfolded roughly in four stages:
Stage 1 consisted of two measures that were more symbolic than directly political: When Egypt's ruler, Khedive Tewfik Pasha, died in 1892, the Ottomans had to confirm the rule of his son, Abbas Helmy II. In the renewal of the firman that confirmed Abbas as the ruler of Egypt, however, the document was deliberately crafted to explicitly exclude the Sinai from Egyptian territory. [23] Instead, it was only stated in a telegram that Egypt should continue administering some of the Sinai forts:
Your highness is well aware that His Majesty the Sultan had ordered the positioning of Egyptian policemen that will secure the pilgrimage in El-Waja, Muwalla, Daba and Aqaba, and in a few other places on the coast of Sinai, in the past. All of these points are absent from the map that marked Egypt's boundaries, which was given to Muhammad Ali. El-Waja was already returned to the province of Hijaz, and the other three points were added to it recently. The status quo in the Sinai Peninsula will prevail, and it will be governed by the [Khedive] just as has been governed in the days of your father and your grandfather. [24]
The return of Aqaba as the westernmost of these mentioned locations would soon become the second point in defining the Negev border.
The British Consul General in Cairo, Lord Cromer, did not accept this and responded with a telegram of his own, disregarding the fact that the Sultan’s message referred to the Inheritance Firman map and specified the Khedives’ traditional "governing role" as a mandate to position policemen rather than a territorial claim: [25] Cromer interpreted the Sultan’s firman-cum-telegram as a formal "definition of boundaries" [26] declaring Egypt’s territory as "bounded to the east by a line running in a south-easterly direction from a point a short distance to the east of El Arish[, the easternmost waystation on the coast,] [...] to the head of the Gulf of Akaba." [27] Thereafter, the British began to produce maps that even excluded the head of the Gulf of Aqaba from Ottoman territory and presented everything southwest of the thus defined border as "Egyptian." In 1892, there was no response from the Ottomans to this telegram; it was officially rejected only in 1906. [28] [29] For this reason, Cromer's telegram is sometimes regarded as a British–Ottoman "agreement," [30] [31] while others see it as merely a "unilateral declaration" not accepted by the Ottomans [32] [33] or a wrong "interpretation" on the side of the British. [34]
It is possible that the early Zionists also played a role in this matter: The first generation of Zionists had been attempting to settle in Palestine since 1882, but Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish land purchases in Palestine had already been prohibited by Ottoman law that same year; [35] partly because, since the 1840s, the British had inserted themselves into Palestine by claiming the status of protector of Jews wishing to immigrate there. [36] [37] As a result, they tried to enter Palestine as illegal immigrants or via indirect routes. One such indirect route was the attempt by Paul Friedmann around 1892, with the consent of the British occupation authorities, [38] to establish a Jewish state called "Midian" on the Gulf of Aqaba's east coast, [39] which Cromer was just about to declare as "Egyptian": Cromer himself reports that it was this attempt that brought the Ottoman Sultan to redraft the Firman. [40] [41] However, since this was but a rather desperate colonization attempt and Cromer's report is quite misleading, [42] it is not certain whether this was indeed a major factor.
The second stage consisted of a series of Ottoman actions aimed at gaining control over the Negev and Sinai. These began with a package of legislative amendments designed to privatize and commodify land, with the goal of sedentarizing the Bedouins in Ottoman border regions and thereby stabilizing these areas under Ottoman control. [43] [44] The culmination of this new policy [45] was the establishment of the new Beersheba District in 1899, with boundaries drawn to include an almost exclusively Bedouin population. [46] As a regional center, the city of Beersheba was built at a point where the tribal territories of three major Negev Bedouin tribes converged.
Lord Cromer wanted to respond to this by now pushing the boundary he had earlier drawn himself in the north from el-Arish to Rafah; however, the British Foreign Office explicitly rejected this proposal. [47] Nevertheless, around 1902, two measures were undertaken to further shift the northern boundary. First, two boundary markers at Rafah, which were said to have marked the ancient boundary line between Palestine and Egypt, [48] were either moved [49] or newly established [50] unilaterally by the British and Egyptians in accordance with Lord Cromer's new proposal. The Ottomans would respond only in 1906 (see below); in 1902, however, this British action again had no direct consequences. [51]
Second, some Zionists had already anticipated this boundary-shifting proposal from Cromer and interpreted the creation of the Jerusalem Sanjak in 1887, [52] which reached only down to Rafah at that time, as a cession of Ottoman-Palestinian territories to Egypt. Subsequently, they developed plans to begin the colonization of Palestine in the "Egyptian-Palestine" [53] region between el-Arish and Rafah. [54] This led shortly afterward to Theodor Herzl's attempt from 1902 onwards to negotiate this area from the British for a Jewish state. [55] [56] Since the British were willing to negotiate over all areas "where there were no white people as yet," [57] Lord Cromer was initially indeed willing to cede him territories west of el-Arish, which harmonized well with his own plans to push back the Ottomans. However, soon thereafter, he withdrew the offer again — officially, because Friedmann's attempt near Aqaba had already enraged the Ottomans, [58] [59] and because the Zionist plans to irrigate El-Arish with pumped Nile water were unrealistic; [60] but actually, probably mainly so as not to "'remind' the Ottomans to address the delimitation problem, and to claim that a foreign settlement was not permitted in the province of Hijaz, which included Sinai." [61]
Although these early plans to colonize el-Arish failed, they still had lasting repercussions: later, they prompted the Zionists to aspire, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, to a Palestine whose southwestern border extended from el-Arish to Aqaba, closely matching Lord Cromer's earlier proposed border redefinition. [62]
With this background, the ground was prepared for the struggle for the Negev to almost escalate into an international war. The trigger was the serious Ottoman preparations made in that year to connect the Gulf of Aqaba [63] [64] or even the Gulf of Suez [65] [66] with the Hejaz Railway. This would have given the Ottoman armies, and through the Berlin–Baghdad railway, which had also been seriously considered since 1903, [67] the armies of their newly allied Germans direct access to the Red Sea. Control over this maritime region, which connected England with British India, was crucial for the British Empire; [68] therefore, the British could not accept these efforts by the Ottomans and the Germans. [69] [70]
Thus, Lieutenant Bramly was sent with a small troop of Egyptian policemen to the Gulf of Aqaba, which had been administered solely by the Ottomans since 1892, to establish several police stations there. [71] [72] [73] A post was provisionally set up in present-day Eilat but had to be dissolved shortly afterward on orders of the Ottoman commander of Aqaba. [74] [75] The British framed these actions as an innocent and "friendly" attempt to clarify the course of the border between Ottoman and Egyptian territory, claiming that this clarity was necessary, as they allegedly had never received the Inheritance Firman map [76] and the border had never been precisely defined, but presumably ran somewhere in this area. [77] Similar attempts at other planned locations — especially the strategically important Taba on the western shore of the gulf, which the British asserted was "undoubtedly" within Egyptian territory [78] — were abandoned after it was discovered that the Ottomans already had troops stationed there and were amassing more forces, eventually numbering over 2000 men. [79] [72] The British then barricaded themselves, along with reinforcements under the command of the former Egyptian commander of Aqaba, on Pharaoh's Island, [80] [81] [82] prompting the British to send the warship Diana to the Gulf, outgunning the Ottoman soldiers. Another destroyer, the warship Minerva, was dispatched to Rafah [83] after discovering that the Ottomans had torn down the boundary markers earlier relocated by the British, gathered several hundred troops there as well, [79] and replaced some British telegraph poles with Ottoman ones [84] [82] [85] to indicate that, in their view, the region southwest of Rafah was Ottoman territory.
Attempts to resolve the emerging crisis diplomatically were unsuccessful. The British insisted that the border between Egyptian territory and the Ottoman heartland ran from Rafah to Aqaba — "the invention of a moment [...], it had never been heard of before." [86] The Ottomans, while making two compromise proposals to redefine the borders, [87] which were not accepted by the British, maintained that at least some parts of the Sinai belonged to them instead of the Egyptians. Thereupon, the French and the Russians publicly pledged their support to the British Empire. [88] At the same time, it was feared by Lord Cromer and claimed by the Ottomans that in the event of war, the Germans would side with the Ottomans, although Germany officially denied this. [89] In fact, diplomatic papers even suggest that Germany, on the contrary, threatened to withdraw its support from the Ottomans if they did not soon yield to British pressure. [90]
When even the support of France and Russia for the British proved ineffective and the Ottomans threatened to put the issue forward for international arbitration, [91] [92] the British quickly issued an ultimatum to the Ottomans in May 1906: either withdraw from Taba and accept the border from Rafah to Aqaba, or the British would occupy the strategically important Ottoman-Greek islands, including Lemnos and Imbros near the Ottoman capital Constantinople, and block all Ottoman maritime traffic in the Mediterranean. [93]
British warships were already underway when the Ottomans finally yielded to British pressure a few hours after the ultimatum had expired, [94] and both sides established a boundary from Rafah to Aqaba in 1906. This line, however, was legally not an international border, but merely an administrative boundary between two Ottoman territories. [95] This distinction was underscored by a British letter to the Sultan, reaffirming that Egypt was still recognized as an Ottoman province under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. [96]
Thus, the border question continued to linger even after 1906. For instance, in 1907, the British, once more trying to extend their sphere of influence northward with the help of Zionists, encouraged the Anglo-Palestine Jews Club to establish a "colony of British Jews at Gaza." [99] When this attempt failed, the British consular agent in Gaza launched a similar project, aiming to purchase around 5000 hectares of land at the new Egyptian-Palestinian border near Rafah for another Jewish colony, which would have at least contributed to stabilizing the border. This attempt also failed, as the Egyptians did not want a Jewish colony on their land either. [100] Simultaneously, the Ottomans began producing maps that depicted a somewhat fictitious administrative geography by including the entire Sinai Peninsula within the Sanjak of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the issue remained dormant and truly new developments occurred only from 1919 onwards, when England sought the Mandate for Palestine after World War I.
During the Taba Crisis, the Egyptians firmly sided with the Ottomans, leading to vitriolic attacks against the British in nationalist Egyptian newspapers. In this way, the Taba Crisis set the stage for the Denshawai incident later that same year, [101] [102] [103] which is, in turn, considered the turning point in anti-colonialist and anti-British sentiment in Egypt.
During World War I, to increase their chances of being granted the Mandate for Palestine after the war, England made three secret agreements: The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, the Sykes–Picot Agreement and Balfour Declaration. Taken together, these meant that, according to the vision of the French and British, the Negev, Jordan, and Hejaz would once again be politically "united", but this time as part of the externally controlled greater Kingdom of Arabia.
However, the British did not regard either these agreements or the recently established border agreement as binding. Thus, once the British were indeed granted the mandate, they adopted the Ottoman view that the newly drawn boundaries had merely been administrative borders between two Ottoman territories, [105] [106] and began to consider various options for alternative border demarcations in the south of Palestine anew.
The Negev question was negotiated primarily on two occasions. The border between Egypt and "non-Egypt" was the subject of negotiations from 1917 to 1919 in the lead-up to the Paris Peace Conference. The Zionists demanded the territory east of a line from the Gulf of Aqaba to el-Arish; [107] however, this was concealed [108] under British pressure [109] with the wording "a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian government." [110] The British themselves considered various options, most notably the "Egyptian solution," which would have assigned the Negev, including Gaza and Beersheba as the two economic centers of the Bedouins, along with the fertile farmland of the Bedouins east of Gaza and el-Arish, to Egypt. [111] [112] The provisional retention of the 1906 border was ultimately a compromise, chosen mainly because it was already marked on maps and needed no additional investment of resources. [113] However, even as late as 1947, Britain did not view this border as final and, while still hoping to retain control over the Negev, [114] even considered reassigning the rest of the Sinai Peninsula to the Negev. [105] This compromise border only achieved the status of an official international border around 1979 with the Camp David Accords. [115] Galilee reports that as of 2019, Bedouins still regarded the regions on both sides of the arbitrarily drawn national border as a single region. [116]
In 1922, the Negev was again the subject of negotiations, as the borders between Palestine and the territory of the designated Jordanian King Abdullah had to be drawn. His father, Hussein, King of Hejaz, had been promised the Negev by the British, among other things, in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. Here too, this (already promised) maximum demand of the Jordanians was met with a maximum demand of the Zionists, who also wanted the fertile highlands east of the Jordan Rift Valley for their national Jewish homeland. Again, the Zionists did not have to make significant concessions, as a compromise was decided by the British, according to which the border should run along the middle of the Jordan River. [117] The promised Negev land was not relinquished by King Abdullah himself, but by British representative St John Philby "in Trans-Jordan's name". Philby's ability to concede the region to the Zionist Organization was based on the argument that Abdullah had received permission from his father to negotiate the future of the Sanjak of Ma'an (which had previously been a part of the province of Hejaz). [118] Even if this was true, it would have been a blatant breach of word by the British, as this was certainly not the position of Abdullah, who made a request for the Negev to be added to Transjordan in late 1922. However, this was rejected by the British. [119] Thus, despite not having been historically considered part of the region, the Negev was added to the proposed area of Mandatory Palestine on 10 July 1922. In this case too, the final border was only established as international border in 1994 in the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. [120]
The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai, is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a land bridge between Asia and Africa. Sinai has a land area of about 60,000 km2 (23,000 sq mi) and a population of approximately 600,000 people. Administratively, the vast majority of the area of the Sinai Peninsula is divided into two governorates: the South Sinai Governorate and the North Sinai Governorate. Three other governorates span the Suez Canal, crossing into African Egypt: Suez Governorate on the southern end of the Suez Canal, Ismailia Governorate in the center, and Port Said Governorate in the north.
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert but spread across the rest of the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa after the spread of Islam. The English word bedouin comes from the Arabic badawī, which means "desert-dweller", and is traditionally contrasted with ḥāḍir, the term for sedentary people. Bedouin territory stretches from the vast deserts of North Africa to the rocky ones of the Middle East. They are sometimes traditionally divided into tribes, or clans, and historically share a common culture of herding camels, sheep and goats. The vast majority of Bedouins adhere to Islam, although there are some fewer numbers of Christian Bedouins present in the Fertile Crescent.
The Negev or Negeb is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba, in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort city and port of Eilat. It contains several development towns, including Dimona, Arad, and Mitzpe Ramon, as well as a number of small Bedouin towns, including Rahat, Tel Sheva, and Lakiya. There are also several kibbutzim, including Revivim and Sde Boker; the latter became the home of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, after his retirement from politics.
The Emirate of Transjordan, officially known as the Amirate of Trans-Jordan, was a British protectorate established on 11 April 1921, which remained as such until achieving formal independence as the Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.
Taba is a town in the South Sinai of Egypt, near the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. Taba is the location of one of Egypt's busiest border crossings. It is the northernmost resort of Egypt's Red Sea Riviera.
Operation Horev was a large-scale offensive against the Egyptian army in the Western Negev towards the end of the Arab–Israeli War in 1948 and 1949. Its objective was to entrap the Egyptian Army in the Gaza Strip. The operation took place from 22 December 1948 to 7 January 1949 and concluded after Britain threatened to intervene unless Israeli troops immediately withdrew from Egyptian territory.
ʻArish or el-ʻArīsh is the capital and largest city of the North Sinai Governorate of Egypt, as well as the largest city on the Sinai Peninsula, lying on the Mediterranean coast 344 kilometres (214 mi) northeast of Cairo and 45 kilometres (28 mi) west of the Egypt–Gaza border.
Rafah is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestine. It is the capital of the Rafah Governorate of the State of Palestine, located 30 kilometers (19 mi) south-west of Gaza City. In 2017, Rafah had a population of 171,889. As a result of massive bombardment and ground assaults in Gaza City and Khan Yunis by Israel during the Israel–Hamas war, about 1.4 million Palestinians are believed to be sheltering in Rafah as of February 2024.
The modern borders of Israel exist as the result both of past wars and of diplomatic agreements between the State of Israel and its neighbours, as well as an effect of the agreements among colonial powers ruling in the region before Israel's creation. Only two of Israel's five total potential land borders are internationally recognized and uncontested, while the other three remain disputed; the majority of its border disputes are rooted in territorial changes that came about as a result of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, which saw Israel occupy large swathes of territory from its rivals. Israel's two formally recognized and confirmed borders exist with Egypt and Jordan since the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty and the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, while its borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories remain internationally defined as contested.
Following are timelines of the history of Ottoman Syria, taken as the parts of Ottoman Syria provinces under Ottoman rule.
The Battles of the Sinai refer to a series of military engagements between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Egyptian Army fought in the Sinai Peninsula from December 28, 1948 to January 2, 1949, as part of the Israeli Operation Horev. The IDF's Southern Command, under Yigal Allon, concentrated forces to push into the Sinai following their success in the Battle of Bir 'Asluj and the Battle of 'Auja.
The Battle of Rafah was a military engagement between the Israel Defense Forces and the Egyptian Army in the final stage of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was fought on January 3–8, 1949, just south of Rafah, today in the Gaza Strip. The battle was initiated by Israel as part of Operation Horev, on the backdrop of the Sinai battles just before. The Israelis were hoping to encircle all Egyptian forces in Palestine and drive them back to Egypt.
Rocket attacks on the neighboring cities of Eilat, in Israel, and Aqaba, in Jordan, have been a tactic used by militants from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and organizations linked with Al-Qaeda because of the relative ease of launching rocket attacks against these two cities from adjacent desert areas. Most of these attacks target Eilat, the last attack on Aqaba was in 2010.
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan – which had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries – following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The mandate was assigned to Britain by the San Remo conference in April 1920, after France's concession in the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement of the previously agreed "international administration" of Palestine under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Transjordan was added to the mandate after the Arab Kingdom in Damascus was toppled by the French in the Franco-Syrian War. Civil administration began in Palestine and Transjordan in July 1920 and April 1921, respectively, and the mandate was in force from 29 September 1923 to 15 May 1948 and to 25 May 1946 respectively.
The Tirabin, were the most important Arab tribe in the Sinai Peninsula during the 19th century, and the largest inside Negev. Today this tribe resides in the Sinai Peninsula but also in Cairo, Ismailia, Giza, Al Sharqia and Suez, Israel (Negev), Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gaza Strip. A township named Tirabin al-Sana was built in Israel in 2004 especially for the members of al-Sana clan from Al-Tirabin tribe.
The Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, also known as the Sanjak of Jerusalem, was an Ottoman district with special administrative status established in 1872. The district encompassed Jerusalem as well as Hebron, Jaffa, Gaza and Beersheba. During the late Ottoman period, the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem was commonly referred to as Palestine; a very late Ottoman document describes Palestine as including the Sanjak of Nablus and Sanjak of Akka (Acre) as well, more in line with European usage. It was the 7th most heavily populated region of the Ottoman Empire's 36 provinces.
The Raid on Bir el Hassana (Hasna) occurred in the Sinai Peninsula in February 1917, during World War I. It was a minor action between an augmented battalion of the Imperial Camel Corps on the one side and a score of Turkish troops plus some armed Bedouin on the other. The raid occasioned the first aeromedical evacuation in the British Army.
The Occupation of Ma'an was the post-World War I occupation of the Sanjak of Ma'an, which straddled the regions of Syria and Arabia, by members of the Hashemite family, who came to power in various regions of the Near East and Arabia; they were King Hussein in the Kingdom of Hejaz, Emir Faisal representing the Arab government in Damascus and Abdullah, who was to become Emir of Transjordan. The region includes the governorates of Ma'an and Aqaba, today in Jordan, as well as the area which was to become a large part of the Israeli Southern District, including the city of Eilat.
"Mawat" was an Ottoman legal category used to classify lands as unused ("dead") land, and thus as state land. This legal category is related to the terra nullius concept, used during the colonial period to classify "land without a sovereign." Critics refer to the interpretation of this legal category by the State of Israel as the Mawat land doctrine, under which many Palestinians, particularly in the Negev, were dispossessed based on this legal basis. An alternative term for this is, therefore, the "Dead Negev Doctrine".
The history of the Negev during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods is essentially the history of the Negev Bedouins: During these seven centuries, the Negev was part of a broader territorial structure that linked it to regions east of the Jordan River and the rest of the Sinai Peninsula. These areas were populated almost exclusively by Bedouins, who maintained significant autonomy from the dominant powers in Palestine, leading the international community to widely recognize them as the indigenous people of the Negev. Only towards the late Ottoman period was the Negev separated from its surrounding cultural region and more fully integrated into the more northerly area of historic Palestine.
In fact, [before World War I,] there had been a brief threat of war and a British ultimatum in 1906, in what came to be known as the Taba crisis, or sometimes, especially on the Turkish side, the ´Aqaba crisis. It was largely forgotten until the 1980s, when in the wake of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Israel and Egypt submitted a dispute over where exactly the border at Taba ran to international arbitration.
The 1841 map showed the British that the border of the area that was intended to remain under direct Ottoman control reached the Suez Canal and even crossed it [...].
Even though deep political involvement was invested in determining the line, it was not defined in 1906 as anything more than an administrative line, that separated two territories that were subject to one supreme ruler, the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman authorities were careful to avoid mentioning Egypt's existence on the other side of the line, and the agreement discussed a line that separates districts – Jerusalem and Hijaz on one side and Sinai on the other. The British chose to ignore the line's legal meaning, and from here onwards they treated it as an international boundary. The agreement that was signed in May 1906 had nothing to do with the placing of facts in the area. It was only the delimitation step, in which the separation line's course was determined.
The British Foreign Office claimed that 'the borderline between Rafah and Aqaba was actually an administrative separation line between two Ottoman provinces', but it did not officially recognize the old–new borderline between Palestine and Egypt.
Sovereignty over the Arava, from the south of the Dead Sea to Aqaba, was also discussed. Philby agreed, in Trans-Jordan's name, to give up the western bank of Wadi Arava (and thus all of the Negev area). Nevertheless, a precise borderline was still not determined along the territories of Palestine and Trans-Jordan. Philby's relinquishment of the Negev was necessary, because the future of this area was uncertain. In a discussion regarding the southern boundary, the Egyptian aspiration to acquire the Negev area was presented. On the other hand the southern part of Palestine belonged, according to one of the versions, to the sanjak (district) of Ma'an within the vilayet (province) of Hejaz. King Hussein of Hijaz demanded to receive this area after claiming that a transfer action, to add it to the vilayet of Syria (A-Sham) was supposed to be done in 1908. It is not clear whether this action was completed. Philby claimed that Emir Abdullah had his father's permission to negotiate over the future of the sanjak of Ma'an, which was actually ruled by him, and that he could therefore 'afford to concede' the area west of the Arava in favour of Palestine. This concession was made following British pressure and against the background of the demands of the Zionist Organization for direct contact between Palestine and the Red Sea. It led to the inclusion of the Negev triangle in Palestine's territory, although this area was not considered as part of the country in the many centuries that preceded the British occupation.
He raised a demand for passing the Semah triangle and the Negev area to Trans-Jordan, shortly after the borderline was officially announced, by claiming that these areas belonged to the vilayet of Syria (A-Sham), during Ottoman rule. Even though the High Commissioner had rejected this demand in the past, it was now supported by some of the officials of the Colonial Office. [... Nevertheless,] Abdullah's demand was rejected. [...] The demand was rejected definitively only in 1925, and it was not brought up by Trans-Jordan as long as Bitain controlled Palestine. During the first years of the State of Israel's independence, the Arabs again claimed Jordanian ownership of the southern Negev, and even attempted to achieve this goal by military means, before rapidly retreating from the idea.