Photo Credit:
Egyptian security forces arrest suspected terrorist in the Sinai.

The tension between the Egyptian government and the Bedouins increased after the signing of the Oslo Accords (1993), when international funds began flowing into the Gaza Strip. These funds were translated into a demand for goods, mainly from Israel, but from Egypt as well, because of the low prices there. The Bedouins who were residents of north Sinai saw themselves as the natural intermediary between Gaza and Egypt, while the Egyptian officials and police and the mukhabarat wanted to profit from the brokerage, trade and transport. The tension increased when the trade with Gaza began to include weapons that the organizations who objected to the PLO , mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad, wanted to import into the Strip, because they were imported from Sinai, not from Israel. Even while Israel still governed the Strip, the tunnel industry had begun to blossom, and smuggling into the Strip turned into a very important source of income for the Bedouins of north Sinai.

Ever since the Hamas movement took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007, it has become the Bedouins’ senior partner in the smuggling business, because a great part of the Hamas movement’s and the Hamas government’s income comes from taxes that are imposed on tunnel excavators, their operators and the goods that are smuggled through them. In parallel, tens of jihad organization operatives who oppose Hamas and are persecuted by the Hamas government, fled the Gaza Strip and found refuge in Sinai among the Bedouins of the el-Arish – Sheikh Zabed area. This way, they remained close to their area of operations, but in a secure place. The Hamas government sent intelligence people to north Sinai, both to investigate their activities, and to organize the smuggling from the Egyptian side, and it was done under the open eyes of the Egyptian security people – eyes that were covered with dollars.

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In parallel, the Hamas movement tried to turn Sinai into a secondary base from which to attack Israel, and because it was sovereign Egyptian territory, Israel was unable to respond. Each time Israel intensified their search for terrorists who shoot missiles into Israel from the Gaza Strip, the Hamas movement has tried to move the battle to Sinai by attacking buses and Israeli military patrols or launched missiles toward Israeli cities, to the detriment of Egyptian sovereignty, of course. And now, post-Mursi Egypt accuses Hamas of responsibility for the terrorist chaos in Sinai, and not without good cause.

In parallel, jihadists from other battlegrounds that had become too dangerous for them, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, began arriving in Sinai, during the previous decade, and have found refuge in Sinai, among the Bedouins. The jihadists brought with them the expertise that they had accumulated in the use of weapons, arming vehicles, producing bombs and preparing car bombs. In January and February 2010, the jihadist population of Sinai received significant reinforcements when hundreds of activists of radical Islamist organizations escaped from the prisons in Egypt that were broken into by the masses that flowed into the streets against the Mubarak government. For the Egyptians, this was the “Arab Spring”; for the jihadists it was the freedom to do whatever they pleased, both against Egypt and against Israel.

In order to receive donations, weapons and ammunition, the Sinai jihadists had to carry out terror attacks and form organizations. In October 2004, the Hilton Hotel of Taba and the vacationers at the Ras-el-Shaitan beach were attacked. In April 2006, terrorists carried out three terror attacks in the city of Dahab, where 27 people were killed and approximately 100 were injured. In April of 2010, two katyushas were launched from Sinai toward the port of Eilat, and one of them fell in the area of Aqaba, which is in Jordan. It seems that the attack in Aqaba was intentional. In August 2011, a unit of terrorists infiltrated from Sinai into Israel from north of the Ain Netafim checkpost on the Rafiah-Eilat road, and 8 Israelis were killed. In April 2012 a grad rocket was fired at Eilat and fell next to a residential area. In August 2012, when a terror attack was carried out on Egyptian soldiers who were stationed next to the intersection of the Israeli, Egyptian and Gaza borders, 16 of them were killed and an Egyptian personnel carrier that was hijacked by the terrorists penetrated into Israel and was destroyed. It is important to note that the terrorists who carried out the action were wearing explosives belts.

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Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups, and Israeli Arabs, and is an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.