Sinai Bedouins Get the Heat in Bomb Blast Investigation

AP ^ | Oct 13, 2004 | Sarah El Deeb

[Jet Jaguar]

TABA, Egypt (AP) - Salem Hameed has lived in his tin-and-wood hut at the foot of the red mountain range for most of his 42 years. Asked where he's from, his answer is not Egypt or Sinai or Taba, but al-Karadma - the name of his clan.

Many Bedouins on the Sinai Peninsula are shedding their historically nomadic ways, like Hameed, whose desert wandering always takes him back to his hut for the nearby water and electricity - and now for his television set. They are now more likely to be running hotels, groceries or souvenir shops than herding goats.

But their loyalty remains to tribe over country and, along with their intimate knowledge of the desert, that makes them natural suspects in drug-running, people-smuggling and weapons trafficking - and now in three deadly car bombings targeting Israeli tourists.

No formal arrests have been made in the attacks, which killed at least 34 people, including Egyptians, Israelis, two Italians and a Russian, as well as others whose nationalities have yet to be determined. They came at the end of a Jewish holiday, when thousands of Israelis were vacationing in the area.

But investigators have said about 30 Bedouins were detained for questioning shortly after the attacks. One of them has acknowledged selling explosives that could have been used in the strikes, investigators told The Associated Press.

Hameed, who works as a guard at a government-operated fuel station, said some Bedouins work in illicit trades, but that others work with the government, either as informers or in posts like his. Harming tourism in Sinai benefits none of them, he said.

A Bedouin, he said, "can sell a cigarette of marijuana. This won't bother the government, it is to earn a living. But something that harmful, no. It has ruined many (Bedouins') homes."

Sheik Ali, who offered camel rides at the Taba Hilton until one of the car bombs tore it apart, was visibly irritated. The 63-year old, who wouldn't give his full name, said he knows nothing about the arrested Bedouins but can't believe they were involved.

"This is my home and you are visiting me. How can I make it so unsafe?" he asked.

It is not only the Bedouins' lack of national allegiance and their nomadic customs that made them suspects. Sinai Bedouins know the desert better than anyone else - the hidden tracks, the water sources and smuggling routes.

"I never use the asphalt. I don't have to," said one Bedouin in Nuweiba, 40 miles south of Taba, who now runs a tourist camp and has been involved in a drug case. He refused to be identified further.

Some 10 semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes populate the Sinai Peninsula, numbering between 100,000 and 300,000. They have lived in peace with the Egyptians and with the Israelis during their 20-year occupation.

But many Egyptians are wary of the Bedouins and associate them with crime. "Bedouins can not be trusted," one Egyptian security official was heard muttering at the site of the Taba blast.

Last month, a gunbattle between Egyptian police and a Bedouin gang trying to smuggle people into Israel left an unspecified number of policemen wounded and their 13 clients - mostly women from Eastern Europe - in police custody. The Bedouins fled, leaving their clients behind.

One Bedouin was killed in a similar gunbattle with police in 2002.

The Israeli military started using camels to patrol its non-fortified border with Sinai for drug and people traffickers.

Hameed said he was treated well by the Israelis, and he gets along fine with the Egyptians.

"We have an Egyptian ID and we had an Israeli ID," Hameed said, chain-smoking cigarettes.

But he said he considered himself from neither place - "I am from al-Karadma," he said, the name of a clan that is part of the al-Heweiat tribe whose land stretches from the middle of the Peninsula to its southern tip.

He spoke of Egyptians as "them," not "we."

Professor Alean El-Kernawi, director of the Bedouin Studies Center at Ben-Gurion University, said Bedouins have been divided and disoriented by the Middle East conflict.

"First, they show respect to the leader of the tribe, and then the authority," he said in a telephone interview from Beersheba, Israel. But because of the many rulers they've known - Egyptians, Turks and Israelis - "it is hard for them to believe anybody."

Bedouin nomads in Sinai have adapted to the ways of life in the tourism-focused Sinai, but tin huts are still tucked near electricity and water installations where Bedouins can extend a cable to get light, or take a ration of water from water pumps.

Many own tourist camps, manage taxi services or sell crafts and hand-woven carpets to tourists. They speak Hebrew and Arabic and supply most of the tour guides for desert safari trips.

Oum Heba - "Heba's mother" - was letting her goats graze on garbage collected from the Taba Hilton and other hotels. She said investigators implicating the Bedouins in the attacks were on the wrong track.

"This is just a trick," she said. "Someone is tricking the government. But the government knows everything."

AP-ES-10-13-04 0202EDT