Themes in the Economy of the Bedouin of South Sinai in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

Writers analyzing recent economic change among the Bedouin of South Sinai have not yet investigated institutions and events beyond the limits of their informants' memories. Marx, Perevolotsky, and Ben David refer, quite rightly, to the period following the Second World War as a time of economic change in Sinai. They note that in that period tribesmen tended to become unskilled laborers in new enterprises such as mining, road-building, and services, all generated by central governments that were then becoming exceedingly involved in Sinai. This trend, together with the growth of contraband in the 1940s and 1950s, modified traditional Bedouin economy by inducing a movement away from occupations based on the use of natural resources. A change in life-style followed, manifested primarily in a tendency to settle in villages such as El Milga and Abu Sileh near the Monastery of Saint Catharine, El Wad near El Tor, or Bir Zreir near Nweiba (see map).

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