(dailynewyorknews) – Egypt military-led government, struggling to manage the transition to democracy, has a rival on the rise: the Bedouin tribes the rebels.

At a meeting last Friday in the southern desert of Sinai, Bedouin leaders accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of treason against Egypt, and warned that – if necessary – which could take up arms to achieve greater representation in the new parliament of the nation.

In a place not far from the ancient monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai mountains Bedouin impose high granite gathered to protest what they denounced as “fraudulent elections” and a political system Historically, say left marginalized and oppressed for decades.

“We will not allow a parliament without representation Bedouin (as determined by) the elections … the alliance forged by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and some Islamic Party,” shouted Ahmed Hussein, a member of the tribe Kararesha.

A prominent blogger Abu Fajr Musad Bedouin took the stage to proclaim: “All our boxes will be released prisoners in Egypt.”

“The military junta has committed treason against Egypt. They have forgotten how they were helped against the Israelis in the 1973 war in the Sinai,” he said. “But we will get our rights peacefully.”

Some complaints of the Bedouin of the integrity of the electoral process has been challenged in court.

A tribal leader, Mohamed Al Ahmar told the meeting that “we have discovered the burned boxes Tor the people of South Sinai in surveys that contain most of our Bedouins voices! Do not know what burned, but it is the responsibility of the military. ”

The destruction and burning of several polls last week asked a court to request a repetition of the vote in parliamentary elections in southern Sinai on Saturday and Sunday.

Al Ahmar said that when the Bedouin contested the results outside the court in the city of Al-Tor of Sinai, security forces fired tear gas and warning shots into the air to disperse them.

The protesters blocked the main road from the town of Sharm el-Sheikh for a while, Al Ahmar, said, “but we are prevented from firing (military) directly.”

Approximately 500,000 Bedouin live in the Sinai Peninsula. They often worked outside central government control of Egypt in a deserted area where smuggling, human trafficking and arms trafficking are common.

During the reign of President Hosni Mubarak, thousands of Bedouins were sentenced to prison. Many claim that was established by the state apparatus and security missing and imprisoned unjustly.

Bedouin tribesmen helped get medicine, food, construction materials, automobiles and refugees from Africa, even in the Gaza Strip, part of the Palestinian territories bordering the Egyptian Sinai, through underground tunnels.

Some of the fugitives Bedouins by the Egyptian authorities. One of them last week in prison for three hours about 50 British tourists, Germans and French who were visiting the monastery of Santa Catalina before authorities persuaded him to release them.

“I let him go after the police promised to carry more than one member of the ruling Supreme Military Council to discuss our demands,” said the Bedouin fugitive CNN.

A popular tourist destination, the monastery was built in the sixth century in the place where Moses is said to have seen a burning bush.

“The poor tourists are so afraid, and we have not seen many visitors since the incident,” said Asem Avanov, a curator at the monastery.

At the recent meeting, some Bedouin leaders have claimed to have smuggled weapons from Libya in the Gaza Strip. CNN and Human Rights Watch in September in the disappearance of hundreds of SAMs of military stores in Libya during the uprising against the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

“We have thousands of smuggled shoulder up (surface to air) SAM missiles into Gaza through tunnels to carry only the quantity,” said a Bedouin tribal leader Tarabeen CNN.

But not all of these weapons may have gone to the Palestinian territories. The same man said Bedouin transform some of these weapons against Egypt’s military-led government unless their demands were met.

“We saved bookings for us … RPGs, machine guns. And personally, I have ten 14.5 mm anti-aircraft guns that I bought at $ 12 000 each.

“We have declared war against the army and not wait to kill us all,” he said.

There is no way to verify the claims of the head of the tribe, but an Egyptian national security leader, Osama Emam, told CNN that the arms of Libya and Sudan arrived in the Sinai peninsula by sea.

Another military intelligence official told CNN: “There are advanced anti-tank missiles coming to Sinai and to go to Gaza through tunnels, but I have no information that comes through Sat”

In the past year, the pipeline that transports gas through the Sinai to Israel was sabotaged at least ten times. The Egyptian authorities have accused the militants of the Bedouin attacks. And the Egyptian army sent thousands of troops to the Sinai Peninsula, facing a growing threat from Islamic extremists belonging to the Takfir Wal-Hijra. Egyptian intelligence officials also worry that the cells of Al-Qaeda sympathizers may be emerging in the region.

Bedouin leaders in the west of Egypt said Friday that there were clashes between the army and tribesmen Gemaet on the main road from the coast to the border with Libya. The violence occurred near the town of Marsa Matruh, like the Bedouins, they tried to recover the lands had been confiscated.

Mubarak’s government had built a fence around the area and planned to use to build a nuclear power plant, according to Khamis Elwani, a tribal leader.

“After the noon prayer … thousands of our men attacked about 300 soldiers with sticks of dynamite and guns destroyed the machine and the barrier of brick 15 km sustains us,” said CNN Elwani.

“We have received no compensation for this land, and who fought for it until he retired military and police took over,” he said.

Three Bedouin and five soldiers were injured and taken to hospitals, and dozens of civilians, the health ministry spokesman Dr. Hisham Sheehan said.

General Hussein Fekri, head of security at Mersa Matrouh, confirmed that the military has been reduced and the police have been deployed at the site. He added that the Bedouin do not remain on earth after the newly elected members of Parliament pledged to address the issue during the first session of new parliament meets Egypt on 23 January.

“It’s their land, and a minimum compensation for it. And they do not want a nuclear plant defenses in fear for their children, I understand,” he told CNN Fekri.

Elwani threatened that the Bedouins take similar action to reclaim their land near the Hacienda Beach station on the Mediterranean coast “if the army does not respond to our request peacefully.”

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/16/world/meast/egypt-bedouin-threat/index.html?hpt=iaf_c1