For over 30 years, the Sinai Peninsula has served as a near-empty territory cushioning the geopolitical aspirations of Egypt, Israel and the Palestinians. With the changes brought about in Egypt by President Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power in 2011, that buffer is in doubt. The state security apparatus that underpinned the Egyptian regime collapsed, creating a vacuum that the territory’s sparse Bedouin population quickly filled with coping mechanisms of its own. Captivated by the prospect of acquiring power, local irregulars reacted fiercely to the regime’s efforts to regain control over its periphery, culminating in the August 2012 operation that targeted an Egyptian base, killing 16 soldiers, and perforated Israel’s border defenses at the intersection of its border with Egypt and Gaza. Security officials, police stations, government buildings and Cairo-based institutions have all come under attack. In the eyes of its neighbors, Egypt is losing its grip over Sinai, transforming the peninsula into a theatre for the region’s competing new forces.
As Sinai’s internal stability erodes, other givens of regional security seem increasingly fragile. Groups antithetical to the old order have found a haven not only in the isolation of Sinai’s mountains, but in the thoroughfares of its largest city, El Arish. Cross-border assaults by non-state actors have exacerbated tensions between Egypt and Israel, calling into question the durability of their peace treaty signed in 1979. Having consolidated its grip on Gaza, the Islamist movement Hamas is expanding its reach beyond the confines of the narrow enclave into its Sinai backyard. Israel’s closure of Gaza’s northern and eastern borders has quickened the process, turning Sinai into Gaza’s primary trade and access route. Sinai’s indigenous population struggles to maintain its share of scarce resources and of the supply chain, in part by playing the various regional rivals off against one another.
Egypt’s efforts to claw back a semblance of the authority it enjoyed under the old order have met with mixed results. The central government’s relations with some tribal elders have improved, and the repeated attacks on state assets in Sinai have ebbed. But promises of a new dawn for Bedouin–Nile Valley relations have yet to materialize, and the police have yet to re-establish control. Future cross-border attacks or sabotage of shipping lines in the Straits of Tiran or through the Suez Canal could yet trigger regional escalation. Few can predict with confidence Sinai’s long-term stability. Without a new political contract balancing the new power and trade relationships in the peninsula, Sinai’s continued fragility could render it a proxy battlefield for surrounding powers.
The old accords underpinning regional security relations have failed to keep pace with the changing times. Devised when Egyptian and Israeli state forces reigned supreme, they are ill-suited to an era when a new quasi-state actor has emerged on Sinai’s borders in the shape of the Hamas government of Gaza, and when transnational actors from Islamist movements to cross-border Bedouin clans challenge the central authorities in and around Sinai. The separation of state forces that enhanced regional security following Israel’s 1980 Sinai withdrawal has now created a security vacuum that endangers it.
To guard against further erosion of regional security, the Egyptian government, Sinai’s population and neighboring governments should urgently consider the following steps:
• The integration of the Bedouin into the formal structures of Egyptian rule in Sinai, particularly the security forces.
• The formalization of access and movement as well as trade relationships across Sinai’s borders with Gaza and Israel.
• Enhanced security coordination between the governments of Egypt, Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Please press on the link to download full article: Sinai: The Buffer Erodes - By Nicolas Pelham/Sept. 2012