Some 300,000 Beduin live in the vast Sinai peninsula—nearly three times the size of Israel—and more than a quarter of them still lead a nomadic existence. The country is difficult of access, harsh, mostly mountainous and desert wilderness. Egypt has been finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its authority there.…

Beduin tribes who settled [in Sinai] hundreds of years ago lived according to their own traditions and enjoyed a relative autonomy, mainly left alone by the central government. They have their own judicial system based on ancient customs and traditions which ensure the homogeneity of their society.… Even today, the uneasy coexistence between the Egyptian and Beduin judicial systems goes on.

When Sinai was under Israeli rule—from the Six Day War in 1967 to the evacuation of Sinai in 1982 according to the peace treaty—it laid down the basis of a tourist infrastructure which was later developed by Egypt and which turned the peninsula into one of the main sources of foreign currency. Israeli authorities enjoyed good relations with the Beduin and tried to improve their lot.

Once returned to Egypt, there was greater attention paid to the peninsula…[as] its tourist potential was being recognized. Efforts were made to develop the northern part of Sinai while new tourist infrastructure was built in the south. Special regulations were passed to prevent foreigners—i.e. Israelis—from purchasing land. The Beduin, however, were not part of that economic boom.

The new hotels in Sharm e-Sheikh and along the Eastern coast were staffed by thousands of employees recruited in Cairo; El Arish vacation resorts were built for the wealthy. Meanwhile the Beduin kept on tending their flocks and doing the most menials jobs; they had to turn to protests, sometimes violent, to get their villages linked to the electricity grid and obtain a steady water supply.

Resentment against Egypt’s central government, especially the ministry of the interior, the police and security services built up and soon boiled over. Extremist Islamist organizations found a fertile ground among disgruntled Beduin, who founded a jihadist group which came to be known as “Tawhid and Jihad,” leading to terror attacks on Sharm e-Sheikh and Taba in 2004 and 2005, after which thousands were arrested.…

Ordinary Beduin started banding together to hold protests and demand not only the release of their parents but more social justice; they wanted low cost housing and scholarships for their children; they also wanted the lands where they had been living or roaming for hundreds of years to be registered in their names. In 2007 the governor of North Sinai promised that action would be taken on all those issues, but little if anything was done.

Meanwhile, radical Islamist movements were pouring money into the peninsula, ensuring greater and greater collaboration with the Beduin. Smuggling in and out of Gaza brought it more and more revenues, while drugs and African immigrants were being introduced illegally into Israel.… It is probably largely thanks to the Beduin that arms and missiles from Sudan—and now from Libya—flowed and keep on flowing into the Gaza strip.

Beduin groups grew stronger and bolder. Under cover of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations in January 2011 they conducted a daring raid on the al-Marg jail north of Cairo and freed Hamas leader Iman Nofel and the head of the Hezbollah cell in Egypt, Sami Shehab. The raiders were equipped with state of the art weapons and drove modern vehicles. This extremely complex operation could not have been planned and executed without the combined help of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

With the fall of Mubarak there was a general relaxation of law and order throughout Egypt, but nowhere as badly as in Sinai. Fearing for their lives secret agents and regular security people melted away. Last July Beduin attacked a police station in El Arish in broad daylight. Another group declared it was setting up an Islamic Emirate in North Sinai.… The pipeline bringing gas to Jordan and to Israel has been sabotaged 13 times—so far.

Sinai is turning into a terror stronghold.… Last August a terror attack on Road 12 left eight Israeli dead.… Israel watches with growing concern as the peninsula is turning into a lawless territory used by Hamas and other jihad organizations to plan and carry out attacks against its southern border. It could—and will—probably get worse when the Muslim Brothers form the next government.…