This is part-two of a two-part series. Here is part one.
As we approach the Ahmed Hamdy Tunnel (نفق الشهيد احمد حمدي), which was constructed after the 1979 peace treaty and is named after a brilliant architect who was martyred in the 1973 war, I point to the kids in the car that we are now entering Sinai. We haven’t been since last summer, but every year we make a point of going to Sinai when we’re visiting Egypt. I find the Sinai desert breathtaking in its raw impenetrable beauty. Especially St. Catherine’s. Though generally popular with the tourists, Sharm el Sheikh is not really my cup of tea. Nor really is Dahab, though it has its own unique charm. But St. Cat’s. My heart throbs with yearning just thinking of camping there with no one with us but our Bedouin guides. My middle son, Sina, is named after it. Sina is how Sinai is pronounced in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. It’s not really a common name in Egypt but, to my parents’ chagrin, it just called on me. And though I didn’t know it at the time he was born, Sina’s personality perfectly mirrors the Peninsula’s. Serene. Sharp. Vulnerable. Beautiful. But only for those who put the effort to get to it.
It is hard for me to imagine that just 45 years ago, a little under 10 years before I was born, that region was occupied by Israel. I wonder how different it would have been. I wonder where the Israeli settlements were. I wonder how it felt for the Sinai Bedouins who lived directly under that occupation.
I wonder how it shaped one particular Bedouin’s life trajectory, if at all. That Bedouin that I’ve been semi-obsessed with recently. Ibrahim El-Argany. The person who monetized Palestinians’ attempt to flee Gaza and seek refuge in Egypt.
Argany was born in 1974 near the Gaza border in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid. He belongs to the Tarabin tribe, one of the largest of Sinai’s 24 Bedouin tribes. At that time, Sinai was still occupied by Israel. After Egypt’s swift defeat in the 1967 war, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula. This occupation lasted for a little over 10 years until Sadat signed the Camp David Peace Treaty in 1979. The withdrawal of Israeli troops and the dismantling of Israeli settlements was completed by 1982. So Argany spent around the first 8 years of his life living in an area occupied by Israel. I wonder what that was like and if he has any memories from that time.
But even after Sinai came back under Egyptian control, the Peninsula was still severely underdeveloped, and Bedouins suffered from a tense relationship with the Egyptian government. Though Northern Sinai is commonly perceived as a breeding ground for militancy today, that wasn’t always the case. The Egyptian Bedouin tribes that lived in Sinai were often treated with suspicion by the government, their legitimate demands for economic inclusion habitually dismissed. By 2004, the relationship took a turn for the worst.
After the 2004 Taba suicide bombings that killed Israeli tourists in Egypt, the government launched its own war on terror campaign in the Peninsula. Yet, because the Peace Treaty with Israel put restrictions on the Egyptian military’s presence and weaponry in Sinai - particularly in Zone C, the strip of land around 375 km long and 20 km wide closest to the border with Gaza and Israel, the main drivers behind this war were the police.
And so the police did what the police does in Egypt as it proceeded to respond to a precarious situation with the delicacy of a rhinoceros walking on eggshells. To find the perpetrators, the police resorted to its unoriginal set of measures which included everything from home raids and mass arrests to police torture. Not surprisingly, this did nothing but further alienate Sinai’s Bedouins.
General disgruntlement culminated in the 2007 Sinai residents’ wedna ne’eesh (ودنا نعيش) - We Want to Live - protests. A young Argany in his 20s partook in those protests which sought justice for the violations committed by the police against Sinai and its Bedouin inhabitants, high among them was the release of Bedouins arbitrarily arrested. Apparently, he was the most lackluster of the Tarabin tribe trio that was first conceived at these protests: Moussa El Dalh, Salem El Lafy, and Argany. Not as well-spoken as El-Dalh or as charismatic as El-Lafy, Argany has proven to be wily enough to outlive the three and somehow weasel his way into the state’s graces enough to create a formidable economic empire. Despite the trio’s objection to the police violations against their people, and although they denied ever working as guides against their fellow Bedouins, they were nonetheless helping the police navigate Sinai’s complicated terrain to hunt the militants.
The situation was particularly thorny because any instability in North Sinai inherently carried with it cross-border ramifications since it immediately threatened Israel’s perennially fragile sense of security. That fragility was further heightened the following year with Israel’s 2005 Gaza withdrawal because it meant they would no longer be manning the Philadelphia Corridor, which is the part of Zone D (located in Israel) that they were now returning to Gaza. This is the same corridor that they have just reentered on May 7th, for the first time in almost 20 years and arguably in violation of the Peace Treaty.
Additionally, on the Egyptian side of that Corridor in Zone C, where formerly only the foreign military personnel of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) and no Egyptian military was allowed, now Egyptian Border Guard Forces (BGF) were to be allowed. This was the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) – commonly known as the Philadelphia Agreement - whose terms essentially outsourced Israeli’s Gaza blockade to the Egyptian government. So when Hamas took power in 2006, and the Israeli sanctions and blockade began shortly afterwards, Egypt too closed its borders. And so it was that the Rafah border which was more permeable to both goods and people pre-2005 came to be effectively sealed.
As a result, where once lawful trade flowed, a smuggling economy emerged in its stead with Bedouins in Sinai smuggling goods to Gazans. But weapons-and-people-smuggling also took place and that gave Israel further ammunition to demand from Egypt to crackdown on the Bedouins and further tighten its grasp on that border. Later, this type of cross-border illegal trade will furnish the ground for the rise of Argany’s export and trading business.
In the meantime, though, it had a more hurtful personal impact on him. In 2008, the police shot his brother among others – allegedly for cross-border smuggling - and disposed of their bodies in a garbage dump along the Israeli borders. The tense, barely functioning, quid pro quo relationship between Bedouins and the police was then fully derailed. And in a continuation of the spiraling tit-for-tat dynamic, Argany led a charge on a police station near the borders, kidnapped a bunch of police officers, and stole a bunch of weapons. He was later arrested and imprisoned till 2010. Meanwhile, his fellow conspirators fled to the desert.
The year 2010 was monumental for various reasons. For one, it was the year Argany was rather surprisingly released for alleged health reasons. For another, coincidentally, it happened to be the year that Abdel Fattah El Sisi was appointed as the director of the military intelligence – one of the primary entities responsible for the Sinai security file. That year was also marked by a flurry of efforts by the fugitive Bedouins to deescalate with the police. While Dalh and Lafy worked on proposing an initiative where the Bedouins would help the police with intercepting smugglers across the Israeli border in return for the rulings against them being dropped, Argany quietly started building what will in a few years become his business empire.
And so it was that 2010 became a turning point for Argany’s career trajectory, one that directly launches him to his powerful position in Egypt today.
The Bedouins’ attempt at peace fell apart when the 2011 revolution began a few weeks later and a full-on confrontation with the police ensued before the latter retreated and the army was deployed to reign things back. November parliamentary elections that same year brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the legislative branch – a rise that was sealed by June 2012 when Morsi, the MB candidate, won the presidential elections. With the MB at the driver’s seat in Egypt came a slackening in the Gaza border – one that was welcomed by Hamas, formerly a branch of the MB in Palestine.
But that honeymoon period was shortly lived as a second round of the revolution in June 2013 - which was effectively coopted by the military and is conceived by many as a coup - brought Sisi in power.
In retaliation, Islamist militants in Sinai began carrying cross-border attacks on Israel as well as attacking Egyptian security and Bedouins collaborating with the state. High on that list of Bedouin collaborators were members of the Tarabin tribe to which Argany belonged. One particularly malign group known as Wilayet Sina declared allegiance to ISIS. Thus began a second more extreme phase of Egypt’s war on terror and Sisi proceeded to further clampdown on border smuggling and terrorism.
Sisi’s war on terrorism was no joke. He resorted to tactics right out of the Israeli playbook. Like flooding tunnels, constructing walls, and creating buffer zones. Like Israel’s buffer zone with Gaza from the north, in 2014 Sisi began establishing a similar 1.5-km-deep buffer zone with Gaza from the south, but on the Egyptian side of Rafah. That comes with all the your typical buffer zone features of forced evictions, home demolitions, school and farmland destruction. Though the government has promised compensation and there are reports that at least some of the Bedouins willingly left their houses, the government did not always deliver and forced displacement has been added to the Bedouins growing list of grievances.
Sisi also relied more heavily on Bedouin collaboration. And Argany has been a vital asset to on that front. In 2015, the Union of Sinai Tribes was established - mostly members of the Tarabin tribe, though by 2022 it grew to include other major tribes like Sawarka and Roumailat. This collaboration was radical because the state armed the union and largely outsourced the region’s security to them. Though the state has historically denied officially arming the Bedouins, it is commonly recognized as a fact. Argany is head of that Union. With the guidance of military intelligence, this Union fought a massive war against wilayat Sinai militants for years. Together with the government, they used everything from starvation to indiscriminate bombing, and were arguably successful in containing the threat possessed by the militants.
And that’s how I imagine Argany was able to acquire the security clearances he needed to be able to offer Gazans his now-infamous Hala cross-border travel service. By delivering on the counterinsurgency front, the government greenlit his business ambitions. In Sinai (Saint Catherine city and airport) and beyond (Cairo Airport Hall 3, New Arabella, Manshyet Nasser national project).
With such success comes power and more power. Just this month Argany was announced the head of a resuscitated Union of Arab Tribes, a union that encompasses all tribes across Egypt and not just Sinai. With all the buzz that Argany’s been getting for his Hala business, one would think that some semblance of probing or accountability by the government would take place. But the opposite seems to be happening. The pre-2011 piecemeal quid-pro-quo relationship between the police and the Bedouins, which was spun into a more institutionalized version between the military and the Bedouins post-2013, is now becoming further institutionalized. And with such institutionalization comes impunity apparently.
**
Why was the story of Argany plaguing me so? I think it partly at least has to do with my being unsure how to process it in my parenting with the kids. In our family, the general ethic of any fairy stories boils down to there are no bad people. Just people who do bad things. And although that never excuses the bad things being done, it always leaves room for redemption. Which is particularly important for kids who are still figuring out right from wrong and who can very easily translate “I did a bad thing” into “I am bad”. Depending on the child’s dispossession, the rather could either cripple them or – if you’re a Sina type figure – it can prompt you to just embrace your “badness” and do more unsavory things.
Anyways, I think Cole and I like to believe that this principle is generally true in real life. But it sort of breaks down once we’re dealing with institutions and an assortment of conflicting interests. At any rate, how do I reconcile a no-bad-people-only-bad-actions principle when I’m sharing with my kids’ that Gazans can’t get through to Egypt, mostly because of Israel, but apparently also due in part to this Egyptian businessman – Argany? We were sitting around the dining table the other day when a diluted version of that story came up. And when Amina asked me “why?” with knitted eyebrows, I stumbled.
Even if all of Argany’s other construction and trade business is open to a two-sidedness interpretation, the profiteering off of Gazans’ trying to flee a warzone is certainly not. And I can’t really imagine a scenario where anything justifies that. I don’t remember what I told Beano then, but it probably was something as prosaic as “there are people who do bad things everywhere”.
But there is another element to this principle that always seems coherent in my head but comes out as word-goo whenever I attempt to articulate it. Especially to a nine- and a six-year-old. It has to do with a sentiment that Galal Amin had reflected on in his Whatever Happened to Egyptians.
When reviewing how Egyptians and Egyptian culture has changed from the 1940s (when Egypt was still a Kingdom) to the 1950s/1960s (Independence and Nasser era), 1970s (Sadat) and 1980s/1990s (Mubarak), he argued it was always towards more economic openness and “development.” But at the cost of something else. Something less tangible. I can’t remember what he named that thing, but to me, that thing is dignity. Karama (كرامة). I remember in 2011 that’s the only sign I would hold in protests. Even though there was more social mobility, that ability to snap oneself from a lower status to a higher one did not bring about contentment but rather – like pursuing a mirage – it meant just wanting more and more. An insatiable want monster was created – more clothes, more cars, more status, more stuff – that necessitated more and more money.
And in the process, the means of how one got their money and status became less relevant.
And someone like Argany could justify his business model and rise to power as just what anyone would do in this-day-and-age. Right? He seems to genuinely be invested in developing Sinai, even from before his rise when he was still just another incendiary Bedouin who joined anti-government protests and even went full-on subversive kidnapping officers when the government’s viciousness struck too close to home and no justice was delivered. All that did was land him in prison. And whatever deal-with-the-devil he made to get out in 2010, that seemed to work. For him at least. Arguably, for Sinai (I wonder whether most Bedouins think of him as a hero or a traitor?). But at what cost. I would say his dignity. Or whatever that other nebulous thing that Galal Amin was thinking Egyptians have lost or are losing. Sounds super naïve on my part I bet. I wonder how history will look back at someone like Argany if at all. I wonder what Argany’s Sinai will look like in 10 years. When my kids are in their teens and perhaps are better able to help me reflect on all this. Anyways, I ramble. But I got a bit more internal clarity rambling here. That perhaps romanticized dignity bit is something that I will more intentionally weave into my parenting. And hope that my kids bring it with them wherever they go.
*I originally spelled his name as Ergany because that was what made most sense to me given its pronunciation in Arabic. But there seems to be consensus on spelling it as Argany or Argani, so I defer to that.
Dignity.