As Egyptian security forces continue their manhunt for suspects in the three suicide bombings in Dahab resort last month, I suspect that they have learned anything from these attacks and that their approach in dealing with the rise in violence in Sinai is still purely a security one. The people of Sinai have long been a subject of discrimination, humiliation, and misunderstanding from the Egyptian authorities. The relationship between the two sides is governed by bitterness and mutual distrust, that started after the “attack” on the area from the investors and the rise of Sinai as a tourism destination.
When the first waves of investors started flowing to Sinai, the Bedouins found the places they used to live, feed their sheepو and fish in "occupied". The investors from Cairo or "Elwady", as the Sinai Bedouins refer to other parts of Egypt, failed to understand how center is the land and the palm trees in the Bedouin culture. To them having a Bedouin claiming that he owns some land in which they built one of their resorts on and then the next day another Bedouin asks for compensation for a palm tree he owned in the same land, was a joke, and worse it made them think of Bedouins as deceivers and dishonest people.
The same ignorance from these investors of the Bedouin culture made them refuse to hire the Bedouins to work due to their failure to adapt to the modern concepts of time and work duties. If these investors were concerned about anything other than their profits, they could've tried to engage Bedouins in jobs that appeal to their notion of time and work like hiring them as guides or any similar job. But unfortunately they didn't and the Bedouins were left out in the cold and denied the profits the tourism brought to their homeland.
Things became worth when some local Bedouins formed some kind of a gang that did unlawful activities in the area, and the government sent police forces whom members came basically form Cairo and Delta, unfamiliar with the Bedouin mindset, and they just went on arresting any one in a “Jelbab” and “Oqaal”. And since then the security approach was the one adopted in dealing with any problem in the area.
After the 2004 Taba attacks police arrested 3,000 people, many of them suspects' family members, and detained and tortured them to extract information. Such collective "punishment" for the Bedouins in the area was sure to produce anger towards the Egyptian government, which adds up to the explosive mix of poverty, unemployment and illiteracy in the area.
Over the years and under these circumstances the Bedouin culture changed fundamentally, and the Bedouins found themselves trapped between old Bedouin traditions and modern ways of live and problems brought to the area by tourism. Which produced a condition that one Egyptian sociologist called “cultural pollution” that took place in the area, and made the once proud unique Bedouins drug dealers and bombers.
Despite all that I still don’t believe what they say of the Bedouins’ loyalty to Israel or terrorist organizations, I won’t also claim they are loyal to Egypt, because loyalty to Bedouins means one thing… family and tribe. And I regret our failure to turn this notion into loyalty to our beloved Egypt and Egyptian brothers.
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