The Travellist Issue 2 March 2015 | Page 38

Laura Jean Zito • Magnetic Sinai The Bedouin’s old style of building isn’t safe from marauders any more and gone are the gentle, quiet open-air days. The new external threat is the Egyptian government hoping to move millions to Dahab from Cairo. The infiltration into the Bedouin village of foreigners may be impossible to halt, as already Egyptians and Europeans now live side by side in Ossela. Now people compete for the proximity to the shoreline, disregarding rules to build 30 feet back. Instead of preserving the oasis as a common garden for all, many developers chopped down the date palms, or just built around them! The Bedouin culture may well die out altogether in the next fifty years as Bedouin now fight with other Bedouin over the possession of lands instead of reaching together toward common goals, such as keeping their village intact. The young are under the influence of the West now and drugs are infiltrating their world along with materialistic values. TIME BRINGS CHANGE, and, it used to be, under Israeli rule, the Musseina were extremely restrictive about letting