Embittered and emboldened Bedouin tribesmen have turned the northern Sinai Peninsula into a lawless and violent frontier between Israel and Egypt.
Security sources said that the Bedouin have also forged links with radical Hamas operatives who have escaped from Egyptian jails or slipped through the border from the Gaza Strip.
Despite reports of an increased Egyptian troop presence, the local security forces have been severely degraded, increasingly attacked and in some cases overwhelmed. Most of the details of the chaos have gone unreported.
Most recently was an attack by unknown assailants who fired four rocket-propelled grenades at a police barracks in the Gaza border town of Rafah on Monday that injured at least one policeman.
This came after armed saboteurs attacked a gas pipeline to Jordan and Israel over the weekend, temporarily halting vital supplies from Egypt. Also, a Coptic church in Rafah was burned down, according to witnesses, following an explosion there.
Israel has heightened its surveillance of the 240-kilometer-long border with the Egyptian Sinai and has reportedly hastened work on a formidable barrier aimed at keeping out terrorists, smugglers and migrants.
“There is no law and order. It’s a major breakdown. The (Egyptian) police are persona non grata and there is violence,” a senior Western security source told The Media Line on condition of anonymity. “The situation in Sinai is explosive.”
The Sinai Peninsula holds enormous strategic significance for Egypt since it is the geographical link with both Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip enclave. Sinai’s approximately 200,000 Bedouins, many of whom are unemployed and living in poverty, have long held tense relations with Egyptian authorities.
“Things are heating up in the Sinai the same way they have been all over Egypt, but to say that there is a chaos there or a need to bring in more troops is an exaggeration. This is not different from other areas in that regime,” Dr. Guy Bechor, head of the Middle East Program at the Interdisciplinary Center, told The Media Line.
Bechor said there were likely elements in northern Sinai who wished to take advantage of the situation, but doubted it would change the status quo.
Fiercely independent, some of Sinai's Bedouins make a living smuggling drugs, weapons or people between Egypt, Israel and the Gaza Strip. The blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt has birthed a lucrative smuggling industry for northern Sinai Bedouins, who often complain of discrimination and harassment from Egyptian authorities.
Israel has agreed to allow Egypt to bolster its forces in the Sinai. Reports said 800 men in two battalions were to be deployed in southern Sinai, but these figures could not be confirmed and sources intimately involved in security in the Sinai said it was just “media spin.” Following its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel allowed an additional 750 Egyptian troops into the Rafah district to control smuggling. Israel has reportedly turned down a second request by Egypt for more troops in the region, which according to the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty must be demilitarized.
“There are all kinds of interested elements in Egypt that would like to bring more Egyptian sovereignty into the Sinai and that is mostly by bringing in more troops there. They see the peace with Israel as some kind of humiliation and they are trying to change the status quo,” Bechor said.
For months, Bedouin have been striking out at Egyptian security forces, attacking infrastructures like gas pipelines and holding protests in demonstration against alleged discrimination and harassment by the Egyptian authorities. Human rights groups have criticized Egyptian policy towards the Bedouin, who faced harsh police treatment after a series of bombings in Sinai resorts between 2004 and 2006, which killed dozens of Egyptians and foreign tourists
“The Bedouin have long, pent up grievances which are now coming to fore and they are very angry,” said the security source. “This unrest is definitely not the same reality that we have witnessed in Cairo. It’s explosive.”
It was not immediately clear who was behind the weekend attack on the pipeline. Egyptian police have announced they arrested a number of suspects on charges of sabotage and possession of arms in relation to the bombing. The arrest was in the town of El Arish, about 60 kilometers west of the border with the Gaza Strip, according to the AGI news agency.
The explosion of the metering station along a gas pipeline from Egypt to Jordan did not damage the line to Israel, but did cause an interruption of supplies to Israel, which receives 40 percent of its natural gas from Egypt. On Tuesday, Ampal-American Israel Corporation which owns the contract announced that gas supplies would resume next week.
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