Amid renewed unrest, political players discuss Sinai development

The killing of six Egyptian officers on 18 August at the hands of Israeli soldiers, who entered the peninsula in a hunt for militants who killed eight Israelis in Eilat, has brought the issue of lawlessness to the forefront again. A military campaign has been launched to rid the area of increasing militants after a group of masked gunmen burned a police station in Arish, North Sinai, on 29 July and marched through the city with black flags.

Its strategic location between Egypt, Israel and Gaza has for a long time meant that the development of Sinai has been tied to security considerations. Under Mubarak, security issues trumped real efforts to integrate Sinai politically, economically and socially into the fabric of Egyptian national life. It is hoped that under a new government, which is due to be elected in November, this will change.

Populating the peninsula is one proposition put forth by politicians in Cairo. The leftist Popular Socialist Alliance Party (PSAP), formed shortly after Hosni Mubarak stepped down, would like to see an additional 3 to 5 million Egyptians living in Sinai as a way of countering the peninsula’s low population density versus its large land mass.

“We would like to build Sinai up to become a protection zone for Egypt. … If we create job opportunities, this will attract the population needed to live in Sinai instead of Egyptians going to the Gulf and elsewhere in search of work,” Ibrahim al-Issawy, an economist and PSAP representative, told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

One of Issawy’s proposals is to combine education with job creation in Sinai through universities.

“Like Cambridge and Oxford, many towns are built around universities. We have many universities in Cairo with college departments related to the desert and Sinai’s environment, like mining engineering and desert farming, that can be transferred to Sinai,” Issawy, said. The idea is that university courses would be completed over a longer period of time, and combine studying with working in Sinai. From this, he said, communities would be born.

Sinai is also featured in the political planning of Islamists, although its thriving tourism industry in the south may cause controversy.

Mohsen Rady, a leader in the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) said that his party would develop tourism and agriculture in the peninsula, as well as institutions in the fields of healthcare, education and other services.