This was an important award because it concerned the implementation of the Treaty of Peace of March 1979 between Israel and Egypt. Israel's obligation to withdraw “behind the international boundary” could not be implemented to the satisfaction of both parties so long as there existed a disagreement over the location of that boundary.

The Joint Commission established pursuant to Article IV of the Peace Treaty, a body of military personnel, finally identified some 14 boundary pillars the location of which remained disputed. And, since Article VII of the Peace Treaty required reference to conciliation or arbitration of disputes not resolved by negotiations, the dispute over the location of these boundary pillars was referred to arbitration by the Compromis of 11 September 1986.

The Taba Case is so called because, although it involved fourteen disputed points on the boundary between Israel and Egypt, the most important area of dispute lay at the delta where the Wadi Taba runs down from the Sinai hills into the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba. Here, on the eastern part of the delta, close to the sea, a substantial hotel was built in 1982 with the consent of Israel. Before that date the delta had been practically empty. Taba was not the name of an inhabited place. It was merely the southern terminus, on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba, of the border between Israel and Egypt. For a while, there was an Egyptian police post on the west side of the Wadi. In the thirties there was also a rest house occasionally used for recreational purposes by a British official working for the Government of Palestine. Otherwise, until the hotel was built, the place was uninhabited and without economic, strategic or even political importance. Yet the disagreement between Egypt and Israel in this connection between 1979 and 1985 added significantly to the difficulties in the political relationship between the two countries.

The process of codifying Israeli private law began in the mid-1960's. Since then, numerous laws have been enacted, each devoted to a certain field or transaction (land law, pledges, sales, etc.). The idea was, and continues to be, that after the enactment of the separate laws is completed, they will be combined in order to create an integral, complete civil code. This stage of enactment is nearly finished, and at present a jurists' committee is considering changes and adjustments required in any of the laws in order to fit them together into one code. This method of legislation by stages has many disadvantages, which have been pointed out in the legal literature. However, there are also advantages. The new laws in the sphere of private law are not inspired by a single legal system or by any particular existing code; rather, they constitute an original, modern Israeli creation, based on comprehensive comparative research and implementation of new, original ideas. In the absence of an established Israeli legal tradition, and absent rooted legal concepts or terminology, the Israeli legislature must create a code which does not grow naturally out of an existing legal system. The code itself will constitute the basis for future development of the system.