Strange place, the Sinai peninsula. An arid triangular lump of red granite and sandstone mountains, interspersed with deep dry river valleys (prone to flash flooding when there is a storm every fifteen years or so) and wide sandy desert plains. A forgotten place.

Ive just spent a week in total indolence there. There is a small port cum scruffy town halfway up the eastern coast – with a Hilton hotel a few miles out, alone on the coastline. A wonderful place to spend some time on a sandy beach, gazing at the mountains, snorkeling in the clear water and doing very little else. Sooo relaxing...

Sinai had bursts of ancient history - in 3,500BC there was a flourishing a turquoise mine; Moses wandered there and started stories that exist in three world religions; and some Christian monks built a monastery so deep in the mountain ranges that icon-hating zealots missed it altogether, and so provided the world with its second largest library of old religious books – next only to the Vatican - and amazingly ancient and beautiful paintings (my favourite dates from the 6th century).

The Bedouins wandered into Sinai in the Middle Ages, and gently lived in harmony with the landscape – discovering ways to use the small amount of underground water to survive with camels in the interior, and harvesting dates and fish on the coast. There are no real problems, apart from a plague of locusts which I saw on one visit (when I stayed with the Bedouin on the coast, when swimming with the dolphin that had come to spend time around their village) But no-one in the tribe could remember it happening in their life time.

The Sinai Bedouin don’t consider themselves Egyptian, and do not register their children at birth – thus avoiding conscription into the army (or community service for the girls). There are a few schools and, if they attend, they tend to have a gift for languages and an artistic flair. But they have a relaxed attitude towards life in general, so only a few ambitious types take education seriously – because going to university would mean registering your existence with the authorities. When it comes to a licence for driving a Toyota flatbed or Jeep it may be worth the hassle though (they love their Toyotas almost as much as their camels)

Until recently this existence continued. Then, because of where it is, rather than what it is, the Sinai’s quiet backwater life changed.

The top left of this peninsula holds the Suez Canal and its strategic entrance to the Mediterranean, where the Suez War of the 1950s raged.

The top right has a point where Israel has its only entry to the Red Sea, also the coastal boundaries of Jordan and Saudi Arabia (called Four Corners for obvious reasons) And it’s a very very narrow strip of water, thus who holds power over it is in a very strong position. There are remnants of medieval fortified castles plus a NATO watching post and the occasional UN Peacekeeper.

Not surprisingly Israel decided that Sinai would be of strategic use to them, and walked in during the Yom Kippur war . But the UN made them give it back after a few years. I don’t think Egypt really wanted it before the invasion. But after the occupation, there was an Israeli built infrastructure of roads, a port, and (in places where the underground water had been tapped) a few kibbutz growing veggies and fruit.

And also checkpoints on the roads, lots of ‘em.

So now, a large posse of Egyptian youth (on conscription I presume) hang around each checkpoint with misfitting black uniforms and faded yellow high-vis vests (now low-vis). If they are lucky, as a fashion accessory, they may have a rusting firearm of some sort. Some are Tourist Police, who fill out forms at the checkpoints, and in February, look cold. Tourism is Egypt’s biggest industry, after all.

Every few miles along the stunning coastline, skeletons of unfinished hotels litter the empty sand. Apparently twenty years ago the government gave out subsidies and cash for such enterprises. But it was just as suddenly snatched away, and there they sit – never to be completed. Just piles of clinky brick and concrete – no services, no nothing. The then Minister responsible for this enterprise had a first cousin who owned the monopoly on cement production. Need I say more?

Now, in the few dusty schools, the first generation of Egyptian children ever to be born in Sinai (they never lived there before the Israelis left it supplied with more mod cons) are sitting slightly uncomfortably alongside the Bedouin. I don’t suppose kids would care, but the attitudes of their parents will be indelibly imprinted.

Five years ago a complex of very posh hotels was built at the north end of the coast, presumably to attract rich Israelis back. Even a golf course has sprung out of the sand. Moses needed God’s help to wipe out the advancing army by parting the Red Sea. But with no national planning approval structure, those in the know are waiting for the next heavy storm. The hotels are built on the flood plain of one of the biggest dry river valley systems in the Sinai...