Peaceful Trek Across the Sinai

An overland voyage from Giza's pyramids to Jerusalem's Wailing Wall used to require a leap of the imagination for Egyptians and Israelis. Today, as a result of normalized relations between their countries, they can make the journey by car or bus across the Sinai in a few hours. Last week Cairo Bureau Chief William Drozdiak made the crossing and sent this report:

Our first driver, Mustapha, punches the accelerator of his Peugeot 504 station wagon and breaks into a smile. Peace has brought him tangible dividends. Each morning, for four times what he made from a day's hustle in Cairo, he takes Sinai-bound passengers on the 2 1/2-hour trip to the Suez Canal. As the highway stretches into the desert, the horizon is broken only by an occasional military encampment, gas station or Marlboro billboard in Arabic. Soon clumps of palm trees signal the town of Ismailia and the Suez ferry dock at Qantara.

Backpacking tourists, women in ragged robes and children hawking sunflower seeds bundle into the sloop for the canal crossing. On the other side we can see ruins from the 1969-70 war with Israel, a bombed church with its cupola listing to one side and crumbled stone houses.

After perfunctory haggling, we pile into a van for the next leg of the trip to El Arish. The tarmac has long ago been chewed up by Israeli armor. It leads to a moonscape of sand dunes that over the centuries has been traversed by Pharaonic armies, Roman legions, Crusaders and even Napoleon's troops. For vast stretches the only signs of life are camels and goats foraging for shrubs.

The twisted wreckage of rusty train cars signals the approach to the Sinai capital of El Arish. After twelve years of Israeli occupation, the town reverted to Egypt in May 1979. Many of the local people speak both Hebrew and Arabic and merchants hawk Israeli goods. At the frontier, travelers are greeted by a sign bearing the word PEACE. Passports are checked and at a makeshift customs depot bags are briskly inspected before a short bus ride across a no-man's land to the Israeli side.

Leaving El Arish behind, our hired Mercedes sedan speeds across the last sliver of Sinai territory, 28 miles wide, which Israel is to return to Egypt next year. The car cruises on through the rolling Israeli heartland and into the steep hills leading to Jerusalem. Soon the chunky stone fortifications of the Old City loom in the twilight. It has taken nine hours--and more than 30 years--to get there from Cairo.

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