Economically motivated violence

Another part of the violence can be traced back to economic motives. Those, I argue are a result of the involvement of certain groups in illegal activities in the North, most importantly smuggling of arms and other goods to Gaza, as well as human trafficking – or e Israeli defense wall along the border to Sinai (AFP 12.12.2011), the selling of organs of immigrants who get as far as Sinai but then fall into the hands of ruthless gangs.

The smuggling of goods and arms from Sinai into Gaza constitutes an issue in the area since 1948 and in particular became an issue after Egypt regained authority in Sinai in 1982. Firstly, having few legal sources of income available, smuggling constituted a lucrative business for the people of Rafah and Al Arish. Second, the presence of the Palestinian refugees in North Sinai provided personal links to the buyers in Gaza. Third, the smuggling of arms in particular was not only lucrative, but has also to be seen in the context of Arab struggle against Israel. Smuggling, however, is limited in the amount of money it can provide and a fierce competition over the control of the smuggling routes emerged. Today, most of the smuggling tends to be controlled by several families (Sawarka, Rumaylat, and Tarabeen) who sometimes cooperate with particular factions in Gaza (ICG 2007: 8).

Aside from goods, the North of Sinai constitutes a major route of human trafficking. Africans who get to Egypt try to get to Israeli from here. However, and in particular since Israel finished the construction of its defense wall towards Sinai (Reuters 02.02.2013), more and more of the African migrants who get smuggled into Sinai are held hostage there to blackmail their families for more money or get killed if no further payments are possible. As Sigal Rozen, Israeli NGO worker in the field of immigration put it in an interview in Der Spiegel, “Whole valleys in Sinai smell like death and decay”, as dozens if not hundreds of Africans get killed there every year while

trying to escape their imprisonment (Der Spiegel 03.09.2011). According to Israeli sources at least 10.000 African migrants have made their way through Sinai across the border into Israel during recent years (DPA 24.05.2011). The business is again divided between criminal gangs and Islamic militants, who control who is allowed to pass through the mountains of North Sinai and who is not (Ibid.). The illegal economic activities in two ways lead to violence in North Sinai. On the one hand, obviously, some of the shooting at the border can be traced back to confrontations between smugglers and security forces. On the other hand, the activities are also disputed amongst the local population who compete for bigger shares, or try to prevent others from engaging in these activities.

First, violence erupts from clashes between smugglers and security forces along the border between Egypt and Israel. Right after the uprising in 2011, a first member of the security forces was shot when he was trying to prevent a “group of masked smugglers with sacks of drugs attempting to infiltrate Israel” from crossing the border (Egypt Independent 24.02.2011). Not only drug smugglers, but also human traffickers clash with security forces, and October 2011 for example shooting between armed forces and smugglers broke out close to Rafah where an “officer was shot and injured after an encounter with a gang attempting to smuggle African migrants into Israel (MENA 25.10.2011).

Second, these lucrative and illegal activities however are also not undisputed between the different groups controlling them, and also subject to criticism or open confrontation by other – non-involved – tribes. This constitutes one of the drawbacks of the breaking down of the security infrastructure in North Sinai, as the competition for larger shares in the smuggling business between the different tribes escalated, or tribes not involved in the business attempted to take justice into their own hands, while at the same time the tribal structures originally mitigating these conflicts had suffered from increasing erosion as a result of Egyptian state oppression. Subsequently, several tribal feuds escalated in North Sinai. In November 2011 for example, the confrontation between the Al-Tiaha tribe and the Al-Nakhlawa tribe escalated into fierce gun-fighting, with the former

accusing the latter of “smuggling Africans and stealing their organs” (Egypt Independent, 14.11.2011). One Nakhlwa tribesman was shot and another one arrested and handed over to the police following fierce gun battles between the two tribes. A report in the Arabic edition of Al- Masry Al-Youm confirms that “traffickers are stealing the organs of the refugees they kidnap, adding that there were violent confrontations in central Sinai as the Al-Tiaha tribe accused members of the Nakhlwa tribe of stealing organs” (Carr 06.12.2011). Another escalation of tribal tensions occurred in May 2012 in Rafah between members of the Rumailat tribe and the Barahma tribe. Although the precise reasons are unclear, it is likely that conflicts about smuggling fueled the fight over a seemingly unimportant issue – the assumed stealing of a bike. Within hours the small hand- fight had escalated and eyewitnesses “said that machine guns and RPGs were used in the subsequent battle” (Al-Masry Alyoum 31.05.2012). According to Palestinian sources even mortars were used and two shells fell into the Gaza Strip (Ibid.). Illustrating the extent of the inability of the regular security forces in North Sinai to contain these tensions, witnesses reported that “security forces have not intervened to end the clashes” while “pillars of smoke could be seen and shooting heard” several hours into the skirmish (Ibid.). A third incident of significant infighting between different Bedouin tribes in North Sinai was recorded in November 2012. Again, a minor dispute about cutting in line at a gas station sparked a fight which subsequently escalated into a fierce battle in the area west of Al-Arish. More than twenty people were severely injured and at least four Bedouins died in the battle (Al Masry Al Youm 09.11.2012). Those incidents of infighting in the North of Sinai, and the lack of similar events in South Sinai is a strong indicator of the lack of group cohesion, and illustrates the negative effects on the society in the North as a whole of the competition between different families for bigger shares of the informal economic sector.