As Egypt holds its first free presidential election, the future of its already fragile 33-year peace treaty with Israel again emerges as a hot topic of international foreign policy concerns. Among the issues central to the treaty is the future of the poverty-stricken and politically unstable Sinai Peninsula - a swath of land that has figured prominently in the two countries’ often-bumpy relations.
Since the fall of president Hosni Mubarak and the precipitous decline of Egypt’s domestic security operations, portions of the Sinai Peninsula have turned from poorly controlled to downright lawless. From among the more than 30 Bedouin tribes of the Sinai, some entrepreneurial armed gangs, working alongside Islamic militants, have transformed border areas of the northern governate into a haven for the smuggling of drugs, refugees from Africa, and weapons for extremists threatening the security of Egypt’s neighbor, Israel.
The peninsula’s value has increased as Egypt’s growing natural gas industry sends the resource over Sinai pipelines to a regional market east of the peninsula. But local Bedouins - a historically disenfranchised population - have protested official discrimination and economic marginalization. Bedouins cannot legally own land in the Sinai; the government estimates only 13 percent of northern Bedouins are employed, and most of them see local jobs going to newcomers from the Nile Valley.
In the three decades since Egypt regained control over the Sinai from Israel, local populations and their needs have been largely ignored by the government in Cairo. But the issue of the Sinai did not go unnoticed in Egypt’s current presidential race. Candidates from across the country’s political spectrum campaigned in the Sinai over recent weeks, promising crowds of Bedouins economic development and increased security.
Observers say that if Egypt’s next president - be it the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi or the former air force commander and short-term prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, who prevailed in the first round of voting - doesn’t act decisively to develop and restore order in the Sinai, Israel could take matters into its own hands. The Jewish state has already drawn a stark line in the sand with construction of a 150-mile-long electrified steel fence with a layer of razor wire on top to keep African refugees, Egyptians and Arab extremists out. Recently, Israel called in additional troops to make sure the fence does its job.
Tensions escalated in August of last year when armed gunmen with explosives crossed into Israeli territory from the Sinai and killed eight Israelis and wounded 30. Israeli defense forces killed five Egyptian border guards as they hunted down the attackers. Responding to the deaths of the five guards, hundreds of Egyptians staged violent protests at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, tearing down a security wall and ransacking embassy offices. Embassy staff escaped unharmed.
, a veteran Israeli journalist, discussed the Sinai as recently at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and called the peninsula a “ticking bomb.”
The Washington Institute’s Egypt expert, later phrased it a bit differently.
“Sinai is not a ticking bomb,” he said. “It is a bomb that keeps going off.” Trager said he thought the events that led to the ransacking of the Israeli embassy were leading to open conflict, but that the two governments “dialed back” the rhetoric and established commissions to examine the causes of the attacks.
Since the beginning of this year - as in years past - life in the Sinai has proven dangerous. Since late January gangs identified as armed Bedouins have kidnapped 24 Chinese workers from a cement plant near al-Arish; two American, three Korean and two Brazilian tourists all were taken hostage in attempts to force Egyptian police to release imprisoned Bedouins. All captives were let go unharmed within a day or two. Bedouins have also kidnapped 19 Egyptian border guards and 10 infantrymen from the Multinational Force and Observers’ (MFO) Fiji contingent.
“Bedouins are reported to have burned several police stations near the Gaza and Israeli borders in the northern governate and 14 separate times unidentified terrorists have blown up portions of a natural gas line near al-Arish in the Sinai that supplies Egyptian fuel - a potential replacement for the diminishing Gulf of Suez oil supply - to Israel and several other Middle Eastern countries.