In the second half of this century, the Israelis and Egyptians battled over the Sinai. I In 1903, the British drew the borders of the Sinai from Rafiah to (present-day) Eilat in an attempt to keep Turkey and Germany a safe distance from the Suez Canal. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the Rafiah-Eilat line became the armistice line between Israel and Egypt. In the 1956 Suez War, Israel captured all of the Sinai, but returned it due to intense American and Soviet pressure as well as a United Nations pledge to keep the Straits of Tiran (formerly under Egyptian blockade) open to Israeli shipping. In 1967, Israel recaptured the Sinai four days into the Six-Day War. This time Israel refused to unilaterally return the Sinai and held on to the territory, building a defensive line along the now useless Suez Canal, paving roads, and settling civilians in several places along the Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts.

In the 1973 war, Egyptian forces crossed the Canal in a surprise offensive to recapture the Sinai. The Egyptian army rapidly broke through the Israeli Bar-Lev defense, but later Israeli counterattacks recaptured most of the peninsula. Israel retained the Sinai until the land was returned to Egypt in two stages under the terms of the 1979 Camp David accords: the first half in 1979, the second in 1982. UN troops stationed in the Sinai monitor the treaty, most visibly at the MFO base in Sharm ash-Sheikh. (See the Introduction to the Region for more background.)