Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

The Sinai Question
Thursday, February 1, 2007

A few years ago I traveled to the Sinai a few days after the bombing at the Hilton in Taba. I had passed that hotel many times -- it's right past the border crossing at Eilat -- and to see the gaping hole in the side of the building and the air of ruin around a usually bustling place was eerie, even post-Apocalyptic. Unlike 9-11, where New York quickly returned to a moving city, that part of the Sinai was simply dead.

That bombing was one of a series in the Sinai that left the normally mystical and eternal place jerked into contemporary politics. For such a serene location, the stench of terror seemed deeply out of place. The chapters on Sinai in WALKING THE BIBLE are my favorites, and the images that the cinematographer captured for the third hour of the show on PBS are what help give that show an elevated feeling.

A new report, highlighted on TIME.com, shows that lumping these attacks under the umbrella term Al Qaeda is unhelpful. The first attack was motivated by the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and the subsequent on the reaction of the Egyptian government to the first one. And the big shocker: It recommends scuttling the "war on terror" and replacing with economic development. Sounds like the Baker-Hamilton report...

Press speculation supported by official spin suggested that the attacks were part of Al Qaeda's global terror campaign. The IGC report, Egypt's Sinai Question, starts off by correctly noting that facts about the perpetrators and the attacks are scarce. Based on the known identities some of the attackers and a review of political factors, however, the IGC sketches the possibility of a complex picture. The terrorists were Sinai bedouin in a group led by a local dentist and an Egyptian of Palestinian origin who was a law school graduate. The Palestinian had worshipped in a Sinai mosque that preached jihad sermons. The bedouin came out of a Sinai community that has roots in the tribes of Arabia and experienced systematic discrimination from the Cairo government. The group's members were apparently aroused by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence in the nearby Gaza Strip abutting the Sinai. The initial bombing of the Taba hotel frequented by Israelis may have been motivated by the Palestinan cause. On the other hand, the subsequent attacks in Sharm el Sheikh and Dahab may have been carried out as a grudge against the Egyptian government--including anger over mass arrests following the Taba attack.

Bedouin discontent, Palestinian connections, radical Islam--it's pretty hard to solely blame Al Qaeda, much less the other side of Bush's extremist coin, Iran. The IGC's main recommendation is not more war against terrorism but a comprehensive social and development plan to "transform attitudes" and address what it says is "the Sinai question."

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 8:09 AM
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