Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
Bedouins are not officially allowed to own land, serve in the army or police, or profit from local tourism. Many locals cannot claim ownership of the ancestral lands their families and tribes have been using for centuries.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
A father and his son inspect a damaged train station in Sinai. Armed groups looted and destroyed the train station in the city of Baluza in 2001. Since 2008 there has been no train transport to or from Sinai.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
A now-deserted police checkpoint in north Sinai is one of many that has been attacked by armed Bedouins with heavy weaponry.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
Hassan Al Akhrasi, an influential leader of the Akharsah tribes, was an ex-member of the local committee in Baluza, where many Bedouins feel marginalised and ignored. They complain they do not gain from government investment and economic development.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
Construction of a resort on Morgana beach in northern Sinai was underway before it was halted by a former governor during the Mubarak era. He was said to have cancelled the project to protect a tycoon whose own resorts might have been negatively affected by the competition.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
A natural gas pipeline running through the Sinai has been targeted more than a dozen times since the 2011 uprising. Bedouins who oppose the peace treaty and export of gas to Israel have attacked the pipeline, which starts in the building pictured above and extends hundreds of kilometres through the desert.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
More weapons have reportedly been flowing into Sinai, mostly coming from Libya. Weapons also arrived through the tunnels connecting Egypt and Gaza, and some have also been smuggled from Israel.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
A child inspects a destroyed security building in Rafah, which was targeted by armed groups during the uprising. The Mubarak government's iron-fist policy in Sinai alienated Bedouins and resulted in violent attacks on state buildings during the uprising.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
In the town of Muqata'a, buildings show damage from shelling and gunfire. The town is said to be a hotbed of hard-line groups who clashed with the army during Operation Eagle, launched after 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed in August.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
The church in Rafah was targeted by gunmen during the uprising, and has since been abandoned without repairs ever having been made.
Mosaab Elshamy /
Hateful messages were written on the walls of the church, the only one in the city.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
Human Rights Watch has released a report about a trafficking network in Sinai that has victimised hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sub-Saharan asylum seekers and migrants, most of them Eritreans. The traffickers imprison their victims in Sinai until their relatives pay tens of thousands of dollars for their release.
Mosaab Elshamy /Al Jazeera
In the border town of Rafah, goods and people smuggling to Gaza has thrived for years using the subterranean tunnels burrowed beneath the border. Just a few hundred metres away from the besieged strip, Rafah lives almost exclusively on the tunnels' economic activity, a more-or-less open secret.