CAIRO: North Sinai governor Ahmed Abdel Hamid announced Sunday the end of a Bedouin sit-in protest near the Egypt-Israel border following a deal between them and Egyptian authorities.
Reports, however, indicate that this could be temporary. The Arabic press reported that the Bedouins could resume the sit-in if the government doesn’t answer their demands in 60 days. Sinai Bedouins want their detained tribesmen released, police brutality against them officially condemned and the government to create job opportunities for them.
Hundreds of protesters had assembled at the Kareem Shalom crossing last Thursday following the death of two Bedouin men the previous day at the hands of Egyptian police. The Interior Ministry said the men had exchanged fire with police during a chase, after driving through a checkpoint in a pick-up truck with no license plates.
It was reported that those gathered at the border, some of whom were armed, sought entrance to Israel out of fear of police crackdowns, with some even trying to scale the barbed wire fence separating the countries.
Over the following days clashes ensued between protestors and police leaving one officer injured.
After Abdel Hamid assured tribal leaders he would look to resolve their grievances — including police brutality, discrimination and joblessness — and would review the cases of Bedouin still detained after the Sinai bombings, an agreement was reached.
"They have ended their sit-in," Hamid told reporters in the provincial capital of El Arish.
"The Bedouin have taken down the tents that they had erected at the border and started to leave the site."
When contacted by The Daily Star Egypt, Rabea Salaam, spokesman for the Egyptian Embassy in Israel, was tight-lipped on the situation, saying: "We have nothing to say about this at the moment."
The Interior Ministry in Cairo also declined to comment.
It has been suggested that Bedouin efforts to cross into Israel were as much an attempt to embarrass the government as seek asylum, though local and international human rights groups have repeatedly denounced Egypt's harsh treatment of the community.
"This latest incident is just the natural outgrowth of years of heavy handed state repression in Sinai," Elijah Zarwan, researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Daily Star Egypt.
"It is possible that they are trying to insult the government, but there have been many similar incidents [of repression] in the past."
The Egyptian government came under severe criticism in recent years for security sweeps of the Sinai, following bombings of Red Sea resorts in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
Over 2,500 people were arrested in a series of operations and accusations of torture were commonplace.
Speaking to The Daily Star Egypt, Gamal Eid, Executive Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said that this latest protest was an attempt to get the government to take notice of their situation.
"This is just a continuation of the past," he said.
"[The Bedouin] don’t have any basic services, the government doesn’t care about them, and they feel they're second class citizens."
"The government always uses force as the solution, but you have to be more careful when investigating situations like these if you want a resolution."
