Michael Batson

The Sinai Peninsula is a land bridge between Africa and Asia and is the only part of Egypt in Asia. Originally called Arabia Petraea it sits between the Mediterranean and Red seas and was once called Rome’s Arabian Province when annexed by the emperor Trajan. Trajan was famous for pushing the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent earning him the nickname Optimus (“the Best”) by the Roman Senate. Sinai was known to Egyptians in ancient times as “the Mining Country” and the “Ladders of Turquoise”. The name “Sinai” is Christian from more modern times based on biblical assumptions and lies in the heart of an area where there’s the aquatic trifecta: the Red, the Dead, and the Med.

Sinai looks like a giant geographic triangle of which I’ve travelled all three sides in three trips: once across the top from Gaza when travelling to Egypt – a journey not a destination; then from Suez staying at Dahab, and once before then going south through Taba along the coast to Sharm el-Sheikh. Sinai (“Sin -ai” or “Si-nai”) covers an area of some 60,ooo square kilometress with a scattered present day population of about 600,000. It’s hot, dry, largely devoid of vegetation, has few population centres, and back then a chilled-out atmosphere with basic amenities, and few visitors.

The Sinai has been part of Egypt for over 5000 years going back to the First Dynasty in the Bronze Age. Later came the Achaemenid Persians, Rome and Byzantine periods, the Ayyubid period with the Fatimid Caliphate later abolished by Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (“Saladin”), the Mamluks and the Ottomans, the British and the successive invasions and occupations by Israel. It’s a region where Middle East is usually prefixed with “turmoil” or followed by the word “crisis” where names are heavily politicised: the tip of the Red Sea is known in Israel as the Gulf of Eilat and to Jordan as the Gulf of Aqaba.

Eilat is a resort and Israel’s southernmost city, while the larger nearby city of Aqaba serves as Jordan’s port and that for other countries in the region as it has been for centuries. From there the journey south takes you first to the town of Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba’s western shoreline at the northern tip of the Red Sea, which runs between the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian Peninsula and is home to the northernmost coral reef in the world. Taba is the northernmost town on what’s called “Red Sea Riviera” and is the busiest border crossing with Israel. The gulf is deep reaching a maximum depth of 1,850 metres in its central area and is narrow: just 24kms at its widest point and 160kms in length stretching north from the Straits of Tiran.

Taba was the centre of an international crisis in 1906 when the Ottomans decided to build a post there earning the ire of the British, who promptly sent gunboats from Suez. The resulting settlement derived from this gunboat diplomacy was the marking of the border of Sinai in a straight-line north to Rafah on the Mediterranean coast, the border used today. Israel occupied Taba in the 1956 war but left the following year. During the 1967 war it was reoccupied again when they captured the whole of the Sinai Peninsula. They began developing the town building a giant 400-room hotel. Following the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, Israel withdrew from the Sinai except for Taba because the exact location of the border was in dispute. Israel eventual left the town in 1989 and in 1995 Israel and the PLO signed the Taba Agreement: Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip more commonly known as Oslo II (or Oslo 2).

I sat on an Egyptian bus in blistering heat there being no air-conditioning driving south from the border with Israel. My hand was swollen from mosquito bites the level of discomfort increased with sunlight and temperature. There was nothing to drink except for lukewarm water. I had visions of drinking cold glasses on milk which seemed like bliss but was an impossibility given the heat and location. I remember looking out to the landward side and seeing slit trenches running along the line of a hill near the road and the burned-out wreck of an Egyptian tank, preserved by the dry desert climate. What I notice about the Middle East is the horizon - there isn’t really one as it’s always hazy so it’s always hard to determine how far you can see; disconcerting coming from a land where the light is bright, and the view extends for miles. Here the mountains kind of blur so you’re never sure if you’re looking at solid geography or just haze.

Nearby to the south of town is the Taba Protected Area 3500sqkms of protected area. The area includes geological formations such as: caves, valleys, mountainous passages, natural springs as well as multiple species of mammals, rare birds, and reptiles. On the coast 16kms south of Taba is the misnamed Fjord Bay, a natural wonder and rare shark breeding area closed to tourists. Divers head to Fjord Hole 16-24m below the surface which contains multiple reef species and to nearby Banana Fjord, a shallow reef.

South of Taba is the port town of Nuweiba. Back then there wasn’t much to it at all but since the Israeli evacuation the then Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak developed the facilities from 1985 and ferries now run to Aqaba. The town itself only came about during Israeli occupation after the Six-Day War. Between the town and the port are a strip of modern hotels, catering to beach holiday makers and divers. Just north of Nuweiba within walking distance, Tarabin village is well known for its Bedouin-style camps where cheap huts are available for rent. Further north, in the direction of Taba, are several other beaches with similar accommodation options. The town itself lies on a large flood plain sandwiched between the Sinai mountains and the Red Sea.

Historically, the area has been inhabited by two Bedouin tribes; the Tarabin to the north and the Muzeina to the south. The Tarabin number half-a-million strong and are spread from Cairo and Giza in Egypt to the Negev Desert in Israel. They are the largest Bedouin tribe in Sinai with their roots going back to the Quraysh tribe of the Prophet Mohammad. The Bedouin lifestyle is changing and facing many problems. Their traditional nomadic existence is increasingly under threat. Unemployment is high. With the new tourist developments in Sinai they drift into service sector jobs with poor pay and high living costs compared to their traditional living arrangements.

Smuggling is often a source of income. When I was in Sinai, I was told that Bedouin run the hashish trade making a journey twice a month up through the centre of the peninsula to meet coastal freighters from Turkey laden with the drug. There are land issues – Bedouin have no land rights just user privileges. Valuable coastal properties occupied in Dahab and other towns get taken over by hotel owners and the Bedouin moved off the land and their dwellings get bulldozed. The Egyptian government eyes the Bedouin nomadic movements particularly across into Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia with some considerable suspicion. Negev Bedouins experience similar problems from Israel to those encountered in Egypt.

Dahab (I was told was from the Bedouin meaning “cool” but is Egyptian Arabic for “gold”) is further south about 80kms from the main centre of Sharm el-Sheikh. There was little to it when I was there. Some rough huts on the beach for rent with no furniture, no electricity, and no floor, just sand. There were some restaurants back then invariably selling local produce, namely fish. The staff were mainly Sudanese employing some dodgy practices of refilling drinking water bottles for sale from the local well and had a device to reseal them, so they’d look like the real deal. There night air was filled with the sound of generators. At the north end of the shallow bay was the Bedouin village, rough houses made of breeze blocks. The Bedouin here got about in flash pick-ups brightly coloured seemingly brand new.

The days were filled on the beach, eating, drinking (no alcohol) and talking, and gazing out at the turquoise water, and snorkelling. With just soft drinks and “bottled” water for sale, Sinai demonstrates the worldwide division of spoils of US fizzy drink conglomerates: while Israel is the domain of Coca Cola, Egypt is in the Pepsi camp. Snorkelling at Dahab is the closest you’ll get to flying while being at sea level. Just metres offshore the bay descends dramatically, the seabed so far down as to be out of sight. It was like hang gliding but in flippers watching schools of fish move about below. One evening at sunset, a Bedouin and his son arrived by camel out of the desert, dismounted, got resupplied, and in swift graceful movements remounted and off they went again. They disappeared to the horizon their figures outlined by the setting sun. If you’ve ever watched camels, they seem to move about eight different direction all at once.

These days Dahab is much changed, a classic case of “you should’ve seen in 20 years ago”, with you being the one who’s usually two decades too late. Dahab is big on tourism, which in another time-honoured cliché worldwide, a great place is “discovered” by visitors, then publicised by foreigners and all those rushing there wind-up spoiling what made it special in the first place. In keeping with its climate and water-based wonder, Dahab is renowned for windsurfing (now overtaken by kite surfing), snorkelling, scuba diving and the more extreme version, freediving; the underwater varieties focussing on the famous Blue Hole. The latter may now be more notorious than famous given it’s one of the deadliest dive sites in the wo4rld with about eight fatalities per year, though no one is really sure of the actual numbers.

A village when I was there today Dahab has about 15,000 residents. The town is divided into three areas: Masbat, which includes the Bedouin village of Asalah, in the north; Mashraba, which is more touristy with more hotels; and Medina which includes the Laguna area, famous for its wind-based surfing activities. On shore activities include camel and horse riding, mountain bikes and visits to Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine’s Monastery. Mount Sinai (Jabal Musa or Mountain of Moses) is two hours away and where, according to the Bible, Torah, and Quran; Moses received the Ten Commandments. Mount Sinai s 2629m high and lies next to Mount Catherine, which at 2800m is Egypt’s highest mountain. Saint Catherine (Saint Katrine) is at the foot of Mount Sinai. A UNESCO World Heritage site Saint Catherine is a town of 4,500 with a famous monastery, as opposed to a monastery with a famous town. The monastery was built when the town was established between 527 and 565 CE, though evidence of human habitation goes back well before then. The traditional people of the area are Bedouin, originally Christians from southern Europe. Unlike other Bedouin they are sedentary agriculturalists rather than nomads. With higher elevation than the coastal plains, the whole area has lower temperatures and less humidity than other parts of Sinai, which in any case is the coldest province in Egypt.

Sharm el-Sheikh (City of Peace) lies at the tip of the peninsula and is the largest settlement in south Sinai, one of Egypt’s Asia cities with a population of 70,000. A major tourist destination from the dreary northern winter, an international conference centre attracting diplomatic meetings, a holiday resort full of hotels and casinos. Located at the head of the Straits of Tiran Its strategic importance led to its transformation from a fishing village into a major port and naval base for the Egyptian navy.

When I went to Sharm el-Sheikh the Sinai had recently been “returned” to Egypt as part of the Camp David accords and it wasn’t much of a city. You could see where development (the Israelis renamed the city Ofira) the occupying regime had ended, literally, by the paving stones along the promenade where work had abruptly halted, and the loose stones were giving way one-by-one. I stayed in the prevailing hotel room of choice at the time, a tent, arranged among many in a semi-circle with a sea view. Amenities were few, bathrooms communal and restaurants hard to find. The sun had bleached the whole area around where I stayed. There were dive shops in lean to buildings. I got bread from the “bakery” a large shed with an earth floor where flat round loaves were stacked on pallets. You bought them by the half-dozen. US servicemen on R and R were some of the neighbours. They spent most of their time there drinking and smoking were the neighbours. Talk with these service people was limited as was their worldview. Other foreign nationals were either backpackers (not many) or UN peacekeepers taking a break from Sinai or Lebanon (under the terms of the withdrawal multinational peacekeepers were placed across Sinai as observers). After a couple of days, the sun and wind sort of baked you in the desert heat. After I week I headed back north. I remember waiting for the bus to leave and watching the driver, with help, tie a motorbike to the side of the vehicle with ropes through the open windows.

My second visit to Sinai was across the north of the peninsula. The border crossing from Gaza to Sinai is the city of Rafah. Rafah is ancient going back to the time of ancient Egypt with a long history of being a border town. Over the ages the city has been known by different names to the Egyptians, Assyrians, ancient Israelites, Greeks, Romans, and the Arab Caliphate (seventh to sixteenth centuries). In English Rafah comes from the modern Arabic. Following the 1948 war when Britain withdrew from Palestine, Egypt governed Rafah. Gaza became home to some of the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or who were expelled following the creation of Israel. During the 1956 war, the so-called Suez Crisis, Israeli forces carried out the Rafah massacre, though as with the Khan Yunis massacre carried out nine days earlier in Gaza Israel disputes this. Israel occupied Gaza and Rafah from the 1967 war until Israel withdrew from Sinai in 1982.

The 1906 Ottoman-British agreement drew the border of Sinai from Taba to Rafah. As Palestine was then also under British control the border helped to control movement of the Bedouin. From the 1930s British forces strengthened border control and Rafah functioned as a trade and supply town for Bedouin. During World War Two, Rafah was a key Allied supply base. From 1949 Rafah was in Egypt-occupied Gaza. From 1967 Rafah was under Israeli occupation until the 1979 peace agreement when the Gaza–Egypt border was re-created and was drawn across the city of Rafah. Rafah was divided into an Egyptian and a Palestinian part separated by barbed-wire barriers. Families were separated, property was divided, and many houses and orchards were cut across and destroyed by the new boundary, bulldozed, allegedly for security reasons. Rafah became one of the three border points between Egypt and Israel.

When I crossed by bus Rafah shared many of the similarities with border crossings in some other places I’ve been. It was busy, crowded, with lots of activity, movement in both directions of people, their vehicles, trade goods of all description with some form of process mixed with chaos and queues where everyone is waiting for something to happen. Inevitably things don’t happen when you want them to and eventually do happen often when you’re least expecting it. These days northern Sinai presents the heaviest risk of terrorist attack across the whole of Egypt from bombings, kidnappings, and mass shootings. Many incidents are perpetrated by Al Qaeda and Daesh-affiliated groups; so best proceed with caution. In the 2000s Sinai was targeted in bomb attacks at Taba, Nuweiba, Dahab, and Sharm el-Sheikh which killed and wounded locals and tourists alike by groups thought to be protesting the rule of Hosni Mubarak.

El Arish, with a population of 170,000, is the largest city in Sinai located on the Mediterranean coast. The area around the city is also ancient being described by Herodotus. Across northern Sinai was the route taken by Alexander the Great on his way to found Alexandria - though he merged several existing villages to do so - the Egyptian city that still bears his name, and on his pilgrimage to visit the oracle of the god Amon at the oasis at Siwah in the western desert. No doubt needing the advice before tackling the rest of the Persian Empire, though Egypt at the time gave up without a fight.

From Rafah to Suez is 218kms. The road across much of northern Sinai hugs the coastline passing Bardawil Lake (named after the Norman king Baldwin I of the First Crusade), a lagoon about 30kms long. The road then heads southwest towards El-Qantara, a city that sits on both sides of the Suez Canal 160kms from Cairo. The bus goes straight onto a ferry for the short journey across the canal which is just over 200m wide. Almost three ships traverse the canal every hour. The vehicles ferries run between vessels making the short journey. Sitting on the bus I looked left (south) to see a super tanker bearing down on us which can be somewhat disconcerting.

Coming from Cairo on that trip back to Sinai the bus went via the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel. Completed in 1981 and connecting Africa and Asia, the tunnel is 1.63kms long. Ten years after construction however it started leaking, so the Japanese generously provided aid money to fix it. These days you can also travel by bridge (built in 2001) meaning you can now go by vehicle under, over, and on the canal. Today there are another four road tunnels, two south of Port Said and at two at Ismailia; infrastructure drives designed to enhance Egyptian trade. From Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh is about 500kms some of the road along the Suez Gulf. South of Abou Redis the road splits, east cutting of south Sinai to join the main coast road between Dahab and Nuweiba and passing Saint Catherine or continuing on south to the Straits of Tiran and Sharm el-Sheikh.

So that was all three sides of the geographic triangle completed in two trips which now seems like a lifetime ago and other parts of it, just like yesterday.