The award of the arbitrators in the Taba case has been subject to criticism on the grounds that the arbitrators based their decision on existing markers on the ground and refrained from examining when the markers had been placed and by whom and whether their siting was in accordance with the legal boundary. Nevertheless, it was a landmark case in that for the first, and so far only time, Israel and a neighbouring Arab State settled a border dispute by means of an international arbitration. States usually go to arbitration only on matters that they do not consider to be of fundamental importance and losing would not have far-reaching consequences. This is true of the Taba dispute, which involved a dispute of some 250 metres of shoreline.Professor Lapidoth summarises that for political and perhaps even psychological reasons the two parties attributed to this dispute much more weight than was objectively reasonable.