Bedouin Arms Smugglers See Opening in Sinai

Wall Street Journal ^ | 2/7/2011 | Matt Bradley and Davit Mitnick

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Israeli officials are nervously watching events in Egypt's sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, worried that a power vacuum in Cairo and the withdrawal of police forces will embolden the Bedouin tribes who help smuggle weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

In a sign of the rising tensions, Bedouin in the northern Sinai on Friday used rocket-propelled grenades to attack the headquarters of Egypt's state security in El Arish, a town close to Egypt's border crossing into Gaza, according to witnesses.

Israel's fear is that with Egypt's police having all but disappeared from the peninsula—after police were asked to step down nationwide on Jan. 28, to make way for the army to restore order amid mass demonstrations—the Bedouin will be free to resume weapons smuggling operations into Gaza, bolstering Hamas and threatening Israeli security.

The isolated Sinai Bedouin—who number in the hundreds of thousands—have long felt mistreated by Egyptian authorities, complaining about heavy-handed treatment by the police and about being excluded from the Sinai Peninsula's recent economic windfall from tourism and mineral resources.

Now, some Bedouins say they have been arming themselves to prevent police from returning to the peninsula.

[gr8eman]

Uhhhh...hmmm...How about “Shoot ‘em”?!

[gandalftb]

Not just weapons, what the Israelis don’t want to admit is the smuggling in of heroin and other drugs through Gaza.

[BlackVeil]

People smuggling is also rampant, with a growing population of African refugees in Tel Aviv, and also - more covertly - women from various nations brought in for the sex trade.

It is amazing that the border is not secure. The Israelis blame the Beduins, but there MUST be some security lapse on the Israeli side, some corruption. Your suggestion of the drug trade would explain that - it carries all before it - because of the money involved.