Abdullah Hamed-Cairo

A recent statement by North Sinai governorate on the transfer of Nile water to cities in the governorate for the first time raised concerns among Egyptians, especially as it comes amid growing concern over the Nile waters threatened by the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and talk of a relationship with Israel.

Observers fear that the move to deliver water to the northern Sinai - geographically closest to Israel - is a prelude to delivering it to Israel itself, subject to unspoken conditions that the delivery of water to Egypt depends on the eventual arrival to Israel.

Observers believe that Egypt is under water blockade from the upstream state of Ethiopia, and its main support with equipment, expertise and defensive weapons Israel.

The parliamentarian Ahmed Tantawi alluded to these concerns in the recording of a video broadcast on the communication sites, stressing the mismanagement of the Nile file, and demanded the need for the rise of all state institutions before their roles.

Growing concern

The statement said the North Sinai governorate, which is witnessing widespread violence between the armed forces and the militants of the so-called "Sinai state," the branch of the Islamic State in Egypt, said that the delivery of Nile water to the city through the canal of peace comes within the framework of the State's plan for sustainable development and the national project for the development of Sinai.

Forty years after the signing of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, which established the Peace Canal to bring the Nile to Jerusalem, the authorities suddenly announced the delivery of water to North Sinai, in light of the current relations between the two regimes in Egypt and Israel, which are historically the closest.

These concerns are reinforced by statements by Egyptian businessman and actor Mohamed Ali that the Egyptian regime has built underground tunnels under the Suez Canal, possibly used to transport water to a foreign party.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Ali confirmed that engineers who worked on the tunnel construction told him about the multi-billion-dollar project.

Ali, who has worked as an army and government contractor for many years and then fled to Spain and began to open corruption files for them, questioned Sinai as the ultimate destination for water pumped through those projects.

The contractor also asked President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to answer the people and reveal the other side of the water, through what he called underground tunnels.

Forced

Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Dams and Water expert Mohamed Hafez confirms that the arrival of the Nile water to Sinai days ago through the canal of peace is not planned before, but is an emergency decision of the Ministry of Irrigation, because of the high level of Lake Nasser to the level of danger, which is 182 meters above sea level, This is on October 17.

According to Hafez, the Ministry of Irrigation was forced to dispose of the surplus water coming to Lake Nasser to avoid exposing the High Dam to a critical situation, according to Hafez. , And discharged into the Mediterranean via the Rosetta branch.

Hafez denies it has anything to do with the development of Sinai. Half of the population of North Sinai has been displaced, and the rest live day and night under the fire of Egyptian and Israeli warplanes, he said.

He explained that the current situation does not allow the flow of the Nile water to Israel because there is no real infrastructure to implement it, stressing that everything sent through the canal of peace was discharged Sinai at random, because the government did not prepare to face the surplus water, so will not benefit Egyptian farmers, not even Israel.

But this can not be denied that the canal of peace and the canal of Sarabium can be part of the final solution to the water problem between Egypt and Ethiopia, according to Hafez, after Ethiopia completed its four dams on the Blue Nile, and the launch of the so-called Ethiopian Bank to export the Blue Nile water.

The bank will be run by an Israeli company that requires water to enter Israel to be allowed into Egypt, but that will not happen six years from now, Hafez said.

Security reasons

For his part, Sinai activist Eid Marzouki sees another angle to accelerate the transfer of Nile water to North Sinai, which is the security interests, he said.

Marzouqi quoted close to the army that the pumping of water in the canal of peace aims to separate the armed forces and the gunmen of the state of Sinai, where the canal of peace is located behind the northern geographical belt of the villages and cities of Bir al-Abd where the army is deployed, while the gunmen are located south of the canal, the canal becomes the water separator Between the two sides.

According to a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources, the state plan aims to plant 400,000 feddans of El-Salam Canal water, pointing out that the state has completed the implementation of the Canal El-Salam canals below the Suez Canal to deliver the Nile water to Sinai at a financial cost of LE 221 million ($ 13.6 million). .