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Sinai....
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The Sinai Peninsula (in Arabic, Shibh Jazirat Sina شبه
جزيرة سيناء) is a triangle-shaped peninsula lying between the
Mediterranean
Sea (to the north) and Red Sea (to the south), located in Egypt and has an
area of about 60,000 square kilometers. Its land borders are the
Suez Canal
to the west and the Israel–Egypt border to the north-east. The
Sinai Peninsula is in Southwest Asia (also called West Asia - the more
geographically accurate term for the Western term of
Middle East) while the rest of Egypt is in North Africa. |
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Sinai Ariel View
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The Sinai is almost entirely desert, but is settled along
the Sabah coast at Taba (near the Israeli town of Eilat), where there is a
hotel and casino. Moving southwards along the coast, there lie: Nuweiba,
Dahab and Sharm el-Sheikh. The Sinai is also settled on the north coast near
the Gaza Strip at El-Arish. Mount Sinai in the Sinai is biblically
significant as it is allegedly the site where Moses received the Ten
Commandments. A monastery situated at St. Catherine in the southern
Sinai Peninsula claims to be at the site of Mount Sinai, though historians and
archeologists generally reject this as the site. The eastern boundary of the
peninsula is a geological fault zone known as the Great Rift Valley, which
can be seen from the upper Jordan River valley, extending southward through
the Red Sea into Africa. |
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Until the early 20th century, Sinai was under the control
of the Ottoman Empire. In 1906 it became part of then British-controlled
Egypt, when the Turkish government yielded to British pressure to hand over
the peninsula. The border imposed by the British runs in an almost straight
line from Rafah on the Mediterranean shore to Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba.
This line served as the eastern border of Sinai ever since, and is now the
international border between Israel and Egypt. |
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In 1948, Egyptian forces passed through Sinai
on their
way to invade the newly-created state of Israel based on a United Nations
mandate dividing the land between the Jews and the
Christian and Muslim inhabitants. During the
1948 war, Israeli forces entered the north-eastern
corner of Sinai, but withdrew shortly after, following British and American
pressure. Under the terms of the 1949 Armistice Agreement, Sinai, together
with the Gaza Strip, remained under Egyptian
control, although parts of it
were demilitarized. |
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