Imaging a tribe leader in a desert area where sand is everywhere. There were no trees, rivers and mountains, nothing to look at and say, “This is the border of our land, this is the place we’ll fight to defend.” since there were no nature landmarks to relate to, that commander then takes a stick and drag it along the groud, and in that sense, “draws” a line in the sand and says, here is the border of our land and we’ll fight to defend.
Beyond this line, no enemy must come. It is from that exotic image that we get this idiom meaning to define a symbolic point beyond which there is no further compromise, whatever ideas or discussions are on one side of the line, that is okay, but beyond that point, there can be no further discussion. The line in the sand represents the symbolic border for the negotiations.
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