Sinai: From Revolution to Terrorism

After the Camp David Peace Accords (1978) and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty (Washington, 1979) were signed, Egypt regained sovereignty over most of the Sinai Peninsula.1 Israeli withdrawal from the peninsula was completed on April 25, 1982—since then commemorated annually as Sinai Liberation Day—while the Taba border dispute was settled by the International Court of Justice in Egypt’s favor on September 29, 1988. Policies implemented by the Mubarak regime as of 1982 sowed the seeds for a violent reaction in the border areas of al-Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah and their environs. The situation in the Sinai thus marks an exception to the peaceful revolution that took place in the rest of Egypt in January 2011. The revolution aimed to put an end to three decades of injustice, marginalization, and repression. In the Sinai, however, it ushered in a new and unanticipated cycle of hardship.