The Argany Peninsula

In the early weeks of the war, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres held a press conference, calling for aid to be allowed into the strip. The Egyptian state mobilized celebrities and influencers to travel to the area. Activists from various parts of the world came together to organize a convoy that would make its way to the crossing, and, if permitted by Egyptian authorities, cross into Gaza. Their efforts ultimately ended in “postponement” and the expulsion of some of these activists.

Officially, Egypt – which nominally controls the crossing between Sinai and Gaza — insists that the crossing is open. But, in reality, Israel controls the crossing by threatening to target anyone who did not secure Israeli approval. And this isn’t just bluster. Israel bombed the crossing several times at the beginning of its aggression on Gaza. Amid this formal stalemate, people and aid still pass through the crossing. And how it is done is an open secret. Behind the scenes stands a solitary figure, in whom business, power and international relations intersect, a figure who, in less than a decade, has transformed from a fugitive of justice to a tribal battalion leader, a partner in the Egyptian military in its war on terrorism and one of Egypt’s most influential businessmen.
The precipitous rise of Ibrahim al-Argany, the figure behind it all, has raised many questions in recent years that have only grown sharper as the aggression’s violence mounted. Now, everything and everyone that passes into or out of Gaza does so almost exclusively through Argany’s companies and his network of connections. Initially, the chaos of Israel’s assault on Gaza disrupted his grip over what is known as the “coordination” business. This did not last long, however, and, in recent weeks, Argany regained his control over the crossing.
In the past months, Mada Masr spoke with dozens of sources, including 17 Palestinians who tried to pay coordination fees to secure their exit from Gaza, two Egyptian coordinators, two drivers working at Hala (one of Argany’s companies), a source working at the Awja crossing, two sources from the Egyptian Red Crescent Society and four members of different Sinai tribes. They explained how Argany built his empire in just a decade in a country whose state institutions are known for their ironclad control, and how he ultimately gained control of the sole crossing into Gaza and became the main arbiter of even the smallest sliver of life making its way into the strip, now drawing its final breaths under bombardment and hunger.
During the early weeks of the aggression, Israel imposed a blockade on aid entering Gaza. In return, Egypt refused to allow the exit of foreigners and dual nationals from the strip as a means to apply pressure on world governments, who considered this issue one of their top priorities, to bring a halt to Israel’s bombing campaign.

However, in early November, Cairo announced the commencement of evacuations for foreign and dual nationals from Gaza through the Rafah crossing. The mechanism involved foreign governments providing lists of their citizens in Gaza to the Egyptian authorities, who would then compile a “foreign passports” list. Once approved by Israel, this list was sent daily to the crossing’s management on both the Egyptian and
Palestinian sides, following approval from the Israeli side. Once their names were added to the list, diplomatic missions informed their nationals of the travel arrangements and would then wait for them to exit via the crossing. When they were through, embassy representatives accompanied them on buses directly to Cairo International Airport. In addition, there were also holders of Egyptian passports or those with a document that confirms their refugee status (which Egypt regularly issues to Palestinians) and Palestinians who do not have any other passports. 
The Foreign Ministry then established a separate mechanism for holders of Egyptian passports. They are required to register their data through a link or an evacuation request handed over by relatives in Cairo at what everyone knows as “window nine” in the Foreign Ministry building. From there, authorities add the requested names to lists that are sent to the officials in charge of the crossing on both sides. The ministry has emphasized that this mechanism “is the only way to return to the homeland and any other means falls under the banner of fraud, deception and taking advantage of the difficult conditions experienced by those in the Gaza Strip and has no connection to the Egyptian state.”
However, this mechanism did not work for Samah*, who has tried to use the link to submit a request to the Foreign Ministry to evacuate her sister and her sister’s children from Gaza since early December. But their names have not appeared on the lists. Samah tells Mada Masr that she visited the ministry multiple times to inquire about the status of her requests. Eventually, one of the employees there told her that the matter is in the hands of the General Intelligence Service, and that she should contact them. Determined, Samah actually went to the intelligence body’s headquarters and spoke with an official over the intercom at the building’s gate, but he denied responsibility for the matter.
In the end, as stories began to spread of people who managed to leave Gaza after paying for coordination services, Samah realized that “we have to pay a bribe to get our names on the lists.” What Samah describes as a “bribe” is what is otherwise known as “coordination fees.” For Egyptian passport holders, the cost can go up to US$650 for individuals over 16 years old and $325 for those under 16. Samah could not afford this, and so her sister and her children remain trapped in Gaza.

In contrast, Latif*, a Palestinian living in the UAE, managed to secure the evacuation of his Egyptian wife and her mother from Gaza. The cost for coordinating their exit was $650 per person, paid to Hala, the company owned by Ibrahim al-Argany. Once Hala received the money, their names were added to the Egyptian coordination lists, and they were evacuated in late December.
The situation is different for Palestinians due to the lack of an official mechanism for their exit. Therefore, Latif was unable to evacuate his mother and siblings, who only have Palestinian paperwork, to join their father, who was stranded on the Egyptian side in Arish city. The father, a man in his 60s, entered Egypt through the Rafah crossing from Gaza with his newlywed daughter to see her off at the airport in Cairo as she was moving to Germany. On his way back to Gaza on October 7, Hamas launched its attack on Israel, dubbed the Aqsa Flood Operation, and the aggression on Gaza ensued. The crossing was closed and bombed multiple times, which left the father stranded in Arish. Without any money left, he is currently staying in a hotel with the help of good samaritans in the city who are covering his rent.
About 40 kilometers away from Arish, behind the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Sinai, the man’s wife and two daughters are living with his brother-in-law and his family in a tent in Palestinian Rafah. Despite losing everything he owned when the house he built “with the hard work of a lifetime,” as he put it, was bombed in Khan Younis, the father did not stop trying to evacuate his family from the strip and contacted coordination agents in early January. The agents, however, demanded $11,000 per person. This would come out to $33,000 for his wife and two daughters. The exorbitant amount is due to their status as Palestinians holding no other passport.
In the first few weeks that exiting from Gaza was allowed, many people seized the opportunity and tried to get a piece of the coordination cake. Those with connections to influential people in Egypt used them to have names put on coordination lists. Meanwhile, many Palestinians were defrauded without even being listed, as many coordinators or people pretending to be coordinators took advantage of the dire circumstances.
Luay Nassar, a Palestinian living in Belgium, is trying to raise $100,000 to evacuate 25 members of his family, including his father, mother and young nephews, who were scattered across the strip after their homes were bombed. Luay explains that his family sold everything they could to raise the coordination funds. “Houses and cars were bombed, even gold was lost in the wreckage,” he says. So he turned to GoFundMe, where he launched a fundraising campaign in hopes of getting his family out before any of them met the fate of his uncle’s family, who were all killed in one of the airstrikes.
This method of fundraising to deal with the coordination fees crisis has become prevalent. Khaled*, a Palestinian living in Australia, reached out to numerous coordinators to evacuate his parents, who were displaced to the Deir al-Balah area, where they now live in a tent. He tells Mada Masr that a number of Palestinians who managed to leave explained that some coordinators only engage in the business once or twice at most before they quit to avoid disclosing their identities since “all coordination is illegal and done under the table,” which makes it more difficult to find a reliable coordinator.

Khaled ultimately launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for his parents’ exit. Prices have risen over time. According to Palestinian families who spoke to Mada Masr on various occasions over the past few months, exit coordination fees for Palestinians started at $5,000 in early November and rose to $11,000 by late January, before Hala, Argany’s company, stepped in to control the growing chaos of coordination.
Initially, the company only coordinated the exit of Egyptians and refugee document holders, refraining from doing the same for Palestinians, which is what company representatives told Khaled when he contacted them in mid-January regarding his parents. However, there have been changes over the past few weeks. In mid-January, security officials at the crossing began asking, “who is coordinating for you?” according to an Egyptian coordinator and a Palestinian whose relatives exited Gaza during the same period.
Hala announced that coordination bookings for Egyptian passport holders would be exclusively made through the company’s headquarters in Nasr City, which eliminated intermediaries or agents for booking. This meant that a payment in dollars had to be paid at the company’s headquarters and that the company was no longer dealing with its affiliate agencies in Gaza, Mushtaha and Hamad Star.
Hala suspended coordination for Egyptian passport holders but announced that it was reopening bookings after only five days. Although the announcement only mentioned Egyptian passports, the company began working on coordinating for Palestinian passport holders as well and implementing a new pricing and payment system, according to various Palestinian sources who contacted the company in recent weeks. Under the new system, Palestinians now had to pay $5,000 for those over the age of 16, and $2,500 for those below the age of 16. The coordination fee for Egyptian passport holders remained at $650 and $350 for those under the age of 16. Similarly, the coordination price for refugee document holders remained at $1,200. However, what changed in their case was that the exit price for first-degree relatives, who were previously allowed to exit at the same price, was now priced as the Palestinian passport holder under the new system ($5,000 for those over 16 and $2,500 for those under 16).
Additionally, the company introduced a statement that must be signed by individuals requesting the service which states that the coordination fee can only be refunded in the case of security rejection. In such cases, the statement said, the company would reimburse the amount while deducting the cost of the “security inquiry with the Egyptian security services,” which was initially $50 but was raised to $100 under the updated pricing.
Moreover, the nature of the lists of those allowed to exit has changed. Previously, two lists were posted at the crossing: the foreign nationals list and the Egyptian passport list. Later on, the Hala list was added. Consequently, all other coordinators went out of business, leaving the coordination work solely to Argany’s company.

***

Providing coordination services in order to exit Gaza is not unique to the past few months. Prior to 2005, when Israeli settlers and the Occupation’s military were in Gaza, anyone could travel at any time. While the procedures were not without Israeli security restrictions, including hour-long delays at the crossing hall or interrogations of some travelers, everyone ultimately left on the same day. With Israel’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the Palestinian Authority took over the management of the Palestinian side of the crossing under the Agreement on Movement and Access. The agreement mandated the presence of European Union monitors and that Israel approve the list of  travelers 48 hours in advance.
However, this arrangement changed in 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and ousted the Palestinian Authority. Amid clashes between Fatah and Hamas, Egypt sealed its side of the crossing, and it stayed shut until early 2008. That is when, opposed to the siege, Hamas used a bulldozer to break through the barrier along the border, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to cross and enter Sinai in 2008. Hamas declared at the time, “We will not accept a return to the siege cage or the agreement signed in 2005. We want a free Egyptian-Palestinian crossing.”
In the aftermath, Hamas and Egypt did reach an agreement for the management of the Rafah crossing, which saw it opened for a few days at a time and then closed for extended periods.
This situation only changed after the January 25 Revolution in 2011, when the Rafah crossing was officially declared permanently open. It was also during this period that armed groups began to emerge in Sinai. The security situation in North Sinai further deteriorated in the last quarter of 2013,
following the June 30 demonstrations which ousted former President Mohamed Morsi and brought President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. The opening of the Rafah crossing at the time was limited to a few days each month, a practice that Hamas denounced as it described the Egyptian authorities’ treatment of the Palestinian side as “unjust” and demanded “a clear mechanism for managing the crossing.” It became a regular occurrence for the crossing to be closed for extended durations, sometimes for up to 50 consecutive days and only opened on days dedicated for the transit of patients, students, humanitarian cases, stranded people and Umrah and Hajj pilgrims. Hamas described these restrictions as a “crime against humanity.”

During this period, coordination to exit Gaza was conducted through the Hamas Interior Ministry’s office in the Abu Khadra area of the Gaza Strip. The ministry, in turn, sent lists to the Egyptian side for approval. This was the official process for coordinating exits, which continued until the outbreak of the ongoing war. However, approval often took months and left travelers waiting for the crossing to open. These long delays gave
birth to the unofficial coordination business, whereby money was paid in exchange for having names added to transit lists as well as for managing bespoke travel arrangements. Unofficial coordination became the most common method for people to exit the strip, to the point that the term “coordination” itself has come to mean the informal kind, in exchange for money.
According to various Palestinian sources who spoke to Mada Masr, coordination services started in 2013 with a price range of $1,500- $2,000 per person. Initially, it was a large, competitive market with various coordinators to whom everyone turned for expediency and convenience.
One of the first and most prominent coordinators was a Palestinian woman known to all as “Um Hisham.”
Um Hisham enjoyed a venerated status, which is clear in the way various Palestinian sources talk about her. Her name evokes fear, and everyone agrees that she has extensive connections in both Palestine and Egypt. According to three Palestinian sources, one of whom holds a senior position in the Palestinian Authority, Um Hisham was the first to start the coordination business.
Um Hisham was a secretarial employee of the head of the PA’s police force in Gaza. After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the PA ordered its employees in the strip to stay at home while continuing to pay their salaries on a monthly basis, in order to disrupt Hamas’ administration of the strip. Um Hisham was among them. The PA source describes Um Hisham as a “smart woman” who started her own business. She started frequenting Egypt through the Rafah crossing and became a “bag trader,” according to the source, which is a term for individuals who pack up goods in a “bag” and travel around to sell them. Um Hisham traded in cigarettes and shisha tobacco and sold them in Gaza’s markets. The source suggests that this may be what made her build strong connections with the Egyptian side.
The source adds that, with the continued closure of the crossing after 2013, those who wished to travel began to turn to her. The sources said she was known for her track record of successfully coordinating exits, even for those who were banned from entering Egypt, a special form of coordination called “blacklist coordination” that commanded higher fees than others in exchange for her services. Um Hisham and her family have since relocated to Cairo.
Others followed in Um Hisham’s footsteps, transforming coordination into a full-fledged business that operates regularly, efficiently and offers deals and discounts when coordinating for a family or a group. Despite this, Um Hisham remains the most powerful of all due to her consistent
success rate, according to the PA source. “She’s very well connected and can prevent anyone she wants from traveling. She can shut down the crossing if the person she coordinated for fails to cross,” the source says. According to the sources, Um Hisham was the only one coordinating for the Palestinian passport holders until Argany and Hala took over.

Prior to Hala’s entrance, a trip from the Egyptian side of Rafah to Qantara at the Suez Canal was another ordeal that the coordination fee did not cover. Normally, this route would take two hours at most. However, rigorous checks at dozens of checkpoints along the Arish-Qantara highway forced travelers to wait for hours. Additionally, the Fardan ferry in Ismailia, the only option available for Palestinians to cross the canal, was open for limited hours each day. Palestinians were only permitted to cross once each bus received security permission. What should have been a two-hour journey could stretch on for days due to these procedures.
This was Hala’s entry point into the world of coordination. In 2019, the company inaugurated a special hall at the crossing, known as the VIP hall, and announced an “all-inclusive” travel program that would coordinate travel from the person’s doorstep in Gaza to any destination in Egypt through the Rafah crossing for a fee of $1,200 at the time.
The advantage that Hala offered to Palestinian travelers was a swift exit from North Sinai, according to advertisements that Hala’s page frequently posted. Two drivers who worked with the company explain to Mada Masr the difference between Hala’s service and the usual coordination. “At the Rafah crossing, I went through the emergency lane without inspection because the bus plate number had been listed. Hala was permitted to have its buses on the Qantara ferry,” the driver says. When the bus arrives at the ferry, he says, “I inform them that the bus belongs to Hala, so I enter the emergency [lane] directly and get on the ferry,” and the journey takes its normal duration. All these facilitations prompted the second driver to work exclusively with Hala and stop making regular crossing trips which involved staying overnight in Arish and then again at the Fardan ferry, in addition to loading and unloading bags due to security inspections at each checkpoint.
Hala institutionalized the coordination market in Gaza, contracting with agents in the strip who officially announced their coordination services. This was not the case before, as the coordination trade was considered unofficial and the Hamas government cracked down on those working in it, according to Palestinian sources. Previously, due to the illegality of informal coordination, travelers were wary of fraud and therefore deposited the fees with an exchange office in Gaza. The exchange office would then pay the coordinator once the travelers had crossed.
However, with Hala’s entry into the coordination market, the process became semi-official. Those who seek the service could directly approach the company’s agents in Gaza, pay the fees and receive a receipt for the coordination service. Hala began operating in the coordination market at a competitive price of $1,200, which included transportation from the person’s home in Gaza to the crossing and then on to Cairo. This forced other coordinators to lower their prices, which at the time ranged from $1,500- $2,000.
As the security situation in Sinai simmered down and relations between Egypt and Hamas improved, the crossing was open for days at a time, resulting in a further drop in coordination prices, coming in as low as $350 before October 7, according to one of the coordinators who spoke to Mada Masr.
Apart from regular coordination, new forms of coordination have emerged for a range of prices, according to two coordinators. In addition to the “blacklist” coordination, there is “hall” coordination, which is sought by men under the age of 40 who are denied entry by Egypt if they hold a visa from another country or are accompanying others over the age of 40. They can only enter after meeting with a security officer at the crossing.
Another form is “gate” coordination, which is expedited coordination, allowing same-day travel. However, after the Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent aggression on Gaza, all coordination services were suspended. When they returned, the coordination market fell into chaos, and it took months for Argany’s company to get it under control.

***

This is not the only avenue through which an Argany company successfully reasserted its control. There is also the business of aid and goods. Three sources — an administrator at the Awja crossing and two others with the Egyptian Red Crescent in North Sinai who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity — explain the way in which the Argany-owned Sons of Sinai company also took control over the flow of aid and goods.
Before the war, the company exclusively administered all operations related to the entry of goods into the Gaza Strip, according to the company’s own publications.

However, with the arrival of aid shipments to Arish and its entry into the Gaza Strip in late October last year, the Egyptian Red Crescent took on the responsibility of receiving, transporting and unloading aid shipments, according to one of the Red Crescent sources. The Red Crescent would contact transport contractors, who in turn would provide the drivers and trucks from smaller companies, in addition to porters to assist the Red Crescent volunteers. The Red Crescent also took on the responsibility of receiving the money provided by the international organizations and countries that send aid, to be expended on the logistics of aid provision.
However, since mid-November, the Sons of Sinai has taken direct responsibility for transport operations and the provision of workers, replacing the Red Crescent, whose role has been limited to receiving the aid from abroad and surveying it, in addition to coordinating with countries, according to both Egyptian Red Crescent sources. The Sons of Sinai first emerged as part of this operation just as the first fuel shipment entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing on November 15. The company declared at the time that it had been “crowned the logistical transporter of this assistance.”
An administrative source at the Rafah crossing tells Mada Masr that this first tanker entered the Palestinian side on the evening of November 14. To the workers’ surprise, the tanker left just 15 minutes later without unloading and its entry was postponed to the next morning, when it returned with the Sons of Sinai logo plastered on the sides of the vehicle.

With this debut, the company began to assert its control over different aspects relating to humanitarian aid. It hung banners reading “Sons of Sinai company warehouses” at the main warehouse used by the Red Crescent in Arish, which had been donated by a local business man to the Egyptian Red Crescent Society. As its influence grew, the company opened several other warehouses close to the main one. It also took on the role of transporting aid shipments from the port and airport and managing their storage, according to the Red Crescent source.
The company also took over the shipping and transport of aid through the inspection processes on its arrival to the Palestinian side, according to both Red Crescent sources. The company specialized in transporting aid shipments coming in from other countries and international organizations, especially shipments that arrive in Egypt via ports and airports outside of North Sinai. The reason, according to one of the Red Crescent sources, is the special status that the company’s trucks enjoy when they arrive at checkpoints and Suez Canal ferries, where they are quickly authorized to pass,
whereas other trucks undergo strict inspection and may be grounded for days while waiting for special security clearance and authorization for passage.
This is why some countries, notably Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have proceeded to deal with the Sons of Sinai directly, according to the source. Other countries, described by the source as “pitiable,” such as those of Latin America or the rest of the Gulf countries, have not sent delegates to accompany their shipments and are still reliant on the Red Crescent, which in turn deals with the Sons of Sinai. The company’s control is not limited to aid operations but extends, as well, to the entry of commercial goods to be sold in the Gaza Strip. The first announcement regarding the entry of commercial goods came from the United States in December, with no details provided as to the quantity of goods that would enter the strip or the parties designated to undertake the operation. No official statement was issued by Egypt on the matter.

Beginning on December 29, data published by the Palestinian General Authority for Crossings and Borders in Gaza mentioned under the subheading “private sector” the entry of 30 to 60 trucks per day through the Rafah crossing out of the 150 trucks that were allowed into the strip daily through the Rafah and Karam Abu Salem crossings. This remained the case until Egypt halted the passage of commercial goods on January 18, allowing only for the entry of aid. According to the Awja crossing source, Egypt’s decision was based on an Israeli request that the parties come to an agreement on a clear mechanism for the entry of commercial goods.
Mada Masr contacted the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, the Egyptian Red Crescent and the State Information Service to inquire about the nature of commercial goods entering the Gaza Strip but received no reply as of the time of publication. The halt remained in place until last week, when Sons of Sinai trucks that were carrying commercial goods resumed entry into the Gaza Strip, according to data from the Palestinian General Authority for Crossings and Borders, of which Mada Masr obtained a copy. And so, the aid and goods business sat alongside the “coordination” business. All of it
in the hands of Argany.

***

Argany’s beginnings go back two decades, following the bombings in Taba, South Sinai in 2004. In response to the bombings, security forces initiated a search and arrest campaign. Dozens of Sinai tribespeople were arrested and charged in various cases. According to testimonies published by various media outlets at the time, the security violence sparked anger among the tribes in the area, led by the three most influential tribes: the Romaylat, Sawarka, and Tarabin.
These tensions prompted some residents to organize among themselves, which led to the emergence of the We Want to Live campaign in 2007. The movement was founded by political activist Massaad Abu-Fajr, from the Romaylat tribe. The protests gathered steam, with protesters at times even organizing sit-ins near the Egypt-Israel border area.
It was during one of these sit-ins in 2008 that a trio, who would later become legendary figures in Sinai, came together: Moussa al-Dalh, Salem Lafy and Ibrahim al-Argany. All of them hailed from the Tarabin tribe, and prior to that moment, Argany and his two companions, along with other tribespeople in Sinai, had been assisting security forces in their search for “terrorists,” as they have said to the media on various occasions. While the trio was among those protesting, the three men also acted as mediators between the security forces and the tribespeople due to their preexisting relationships.

This sit-in, however, marked a turning point. According to an investigation published by Al-Masry Al-Youm two years later, a security official in North Sinai reached out to Lafy and requested his assistance in mediating between security and some of the tribespeople protesting near the border to persuade them to end their sit-in. Lafy told the newspaper that he was busy at the time, so Argany called his brother and asked him to go to the sit-in to help diffuse the situation. Instead of de-escalating the situation, a police officer shot and killed Argany’s brother and two of his friends. The police claimed they were armed and that they refused to comply with security procedures at a checkpoint, which Argany vehemently denied.
The bodies of the deceased were found in a garbage dump, prompting Lafy and Argany to kidnap dozens of police officers. Argany appeared in a widely circulated video in which he asked the captive officers why his brother had been killed.

This marked a new chapter in the life of the trio. The dozens of officers were released a day after being taken captive and the deputy interior minister for public security at the time contacted Argany and requested that they meet to settle the crisis, promising them that they would be safe. Argany and Lafy went to meet with the deputy minister, but, according to their accounts, they were arrested upon arrival. Of the trio, only Dalah
remained free. He was briefly detained in September 2009 before being released.
In February 2010, a tribal group hatched a meticulous plan to break Lafy out of prison, a source close to the trio tells Mada Masr. One of Lafy’s acquaintances, they explain, filed a lawsuit against him in Arish and alleged that he issued him a bad check. This required that Lafy be transferred from his Ismailiya prison to Arish to face the allegations. As the transport vehicle approached Arish, a group of tribesmen attacked the vehicle. They successfully broke Lafy free, killing two officers, including a ranking officer, in the process. Argany remained in prison, whereas the rest fled to the difficult terrain of the Wadi al-Amr area in the middle of the Sinai desert.

In the aftermath of these events, the Interior Ministry launched a large-scale security campaign, which included reopening all security files of tribesmen and carrying out mass arrests as it launched incursions into villages to conduct raids on people’s homes. This led many tribal youths to flee to the desert and join Dalah and Lafy. Under the brunt of repression, legends around the group and their defiance of the police began to grow. The group itself began to take their case to the public. That summer, Lafy gave a televised interview to the Youm7 news outlet. Journalist Ahmed
Ragab, the journalist who penned the Al-Masry Al-Youm investigation, then went to the desert to interview Dalah and Lafy.
Dalah was center stage in this scene and began to be referred to as the “media spokesperson for the North Sinai group wanted by the law.” He penned a letter to the editor in chief of Al-Masry Al-Youm and held a press conference to defend the group’s position, in addition to meeting with several members of Parliament. In an article published by Mada Masr in 2017, Ragab recalled that Dalah was the closest among the group to having “the stature of a tribal sheikh.” He outlined features of his personality: “He writes poetry and Googles his own name. He listens to music under the moon and the stars using a laptop connected to a network across the nearby border. He places the teapot over the burning firewood as he negotiates, with clear confidence and force, with an intelligence officer who attempts to threaten him with his son’s arrest.”

In the end, the state released Argany and 32 others in July 2010, and the situation in Sinai finally settled down. This calm only lasted two months before being shattered again, when the North Sinai Court issued in-absentia life sentences against seven tribe members, including Lafy, and the state began mobilizing its forces to re-arrest them. The Interior Ministry and the group’s game of cat and mouse continued over the next months. In late 2010, the Tarabin tribe held a conference, attended by all of its elders, in which Dalah presented an initiative to the state, vowing to prevent smuggling and the use of the tribe’s routes for human trafficking to Israel — both prevalent activities at the time — in exchange for dropping the in-absentia rulings against their tribesmen.
Weeks later, the January 25 Revolution began, and the police force collapsed, bringing its search for the Argany-Lafy-Dalah trio to a halt. One of the group’s demands had been met after all.
In the months leading up to the revolution, the police focused its pursuit on Dalah and Lafy, while Argany lived a normal life. After his release from prison, he established the Sons of Sinai Construction Company, which worked in the thriving stone quarry business in northern and central Sinai. In 2010, he also established the Seven Mountains Group, which presents itself as “the mother-company of a group of pioneering companies in various sectors,” the Sons of Sinai among them.
Post-revolution, Dalah and Lafy were engulfed in a battle against Hassan Rateb, who was among the most prominent businessmen in North Sinai with close ties to deposed President Hosni Mubarak. Argany steered clear of that battle, at least publicly, and focused on running his business.

The sources agree that Argany was the least impressive of the trio. A graduate of the faculty of al-Alsun, Dalah was educated, well spoken and capable of advocating for himself. Lafy was his right-hand man, whom Ragab describes as “a smuggler and rebel, a jailbird and a fighter” and the “prospective Don Corleone of Egypt.” Next to these two, Argany was no more than a close friend, a third wheel to their dynamic duo.
After the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in 2012, Israel launched an eight-day military assault on Gaza, which ended with Egyptian mediation. The reconstruction effort that began at the time was led by Qatar, and in 2013, Qatar’s reconstruction committee announced that it had signed a $400 million agreement with the state-owned Arab Contractors company to undertake the reconstruction effort. Two Egyptian companies assumed the implementation of the contracting works. The first company, Al-Buraq, was alleged to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arab Contractors subsequently admitted that it had awarded the contract under pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood government. The second company was Argany’s Sons of Sinai, which acquired its share of contracts through a Palestinian company charged with administering the works in Gaza.
The contracting of the two companies angered some tribes, which proceeded to block the roads to prevent trucks from entering the Gaza Strip until they were allowed to participate in the reconstruction process, according to Al-Watan newspaper. A struggle ensued between the two companies in their bids to gain the loyalty of the tribes and prominent families, which halted the entry of trucks for the reconstruction effort.

However, the Sons of Sinai was able to continue working, following the intervention of Argany’s friends, Dalah and Lafy, who played a major role in securing the truck routes through alliances that they forged using money and influence, with members of the other tribes, according to a Romaylat tribe source close to the dispute at the time. After the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in July 2013, and in light of the political and security drama unfolding in Egypt, the Rafah crossing was closed and remained so until December. The following year, 2014, would prove pivotal in Argany’s upward trajectory.
The first factor was his company’s ability to monopolize material transport operations in the reconstruction effort. Al-Buraq lost its share of the Qatari grant which allowed the Sons of Sinai to take over the transport operations required by the project. In the summer of 2014, Israel launched one of its most heinous military offensives against the Gaza Strip. After the aggression, Egypt called for a conference on the reconstruction of the strip. The conference gathered about $5.4 billion in donations, half of which were earmarked for reconstruction. The Sons of Sinai took exclusive control of the shipping and transport of goods into Gaza via the Rafah crossing, in addition to administering transport operations related to reconstruction requirements.

Sisi, who was the defense minister at the time, was preparing to run and win Egypt’s presidential elections. During his electoral campaign, Sisi met with a number of Sinai elders and business people, including Argany, who sat beside the future president, holding a laptop and presenting his ideas on establishing marble and glass sand projects in Sinai. “You’ll bring billions into Egypt and Sinai,” Argany said at the time. 
In a 2015 televised interview with Mostafa Bakry, a media figure close to the regime, Argany said that Sisi had been receptive to his ideas. Two months after Sisi assumed the presidency, the Misr Sinai Industrial Development and Investment company was established. Fifty-one percent of the company’s shares were owned by the Armed Forces’s National Service Projects Organization, while the remaining 49 percent of shares were distributed among civilian shareholders. Argany was appointed to head the company’s board of directors. In the interview with Bakry, Argany noted that all of the tribes of Sinai were partners in this company, with company shares offered to them for LE10 per share. However, he did not disclose his own share (the Organi Group website lists Misr Sinai as one of its companies). With this began the expansion phase in Argany’s business.

The second factor was the rise in attacks by armed groups in Sinai — especially Ansar Bayt al-Maqdess, which rebranded as the Province of Sinai once it declared allegiance to the Islamic State — and the beginning of the counterterrorism war in the peninsula. 
The Armed Forces faced difficulty in fighting armed people who would disappear into the desert,“ghosts” as described by Argany himself in the televised interview. The challenge was compounded by the restrictions that Egypt’s peace agreement with Israel imposes on the use of arms and military deployments in the area close to the border, which was the initial hotbed of Islamist insurgency.
This is why the state had to turn to tribesmen who know the land and wield influence. The state approached the three main tribes, the Romaylat, Sawarka and Tarabin, asking them to take up arms and fight alongside the military. “The Egyptian Armed Forces sends an army that is willing to fight but finds no one to fight against. They come out from behind a rock, ghosts that fight and flee,” said Argany. “But with the tribesmen, they can’t hit and run. They’ll get them in their sleep,” Argany told Bakry. 
According to a Romaylat tribe source, the Sawarka and Romaylat tribes did not object at the time, but they asked that the fighting be done in accordance with tribal convention, that is, that each tribe fight only on its own lands and that the tribesmen themselves carry out security sweeps under the supervision of the Armed Forces. But the military rejected the tribes’ conditions and made do with the Argany-Lafy-Dalah trio to help it with the war. They were joined by some from the Romaylat and Sawarka tribes but on individual bases and irrespective of their tribes.

In 2015, the trio established a new entity called the Union of Sinai Tribes, which Argany referred to as the National Guard during the television interview. But Argany’s “union” was really just a force made up mostly of Tarabin tribe members. Argany repeatedly tried to emphasize that the union includes all tribes, but Dalah was more blunt and emphasized that there was a crisis among the Sawarka and Romaylat tribes.
As a result, the union contented itself with protecting the Tarabin’s territories and preventing the Province of Sinai’s expansion into them. But the militant group expanded its activities in the territories of Sawarka and Romaylat, and coastal cities, until it eventually reached the North Sinai capital, Arish.
Thus, following the usual division among the trio, Dalah assumed the role of the union’s spokesperson. His personal Facebook page became a source for the union’s statements regarding the killing or capture of Province of Sinai militants. Meanwhile, Lafy managed operations on the ground and Argany took on the responsibility of financing.
Dalah remained at the forefront, giving statements to local and international media outlets and holding meetings in newspaper offices and on TV channels. On the ground, Lafy carved out a legendary reputation alongside Colonel Ahmed al-Mansi, further elevating his status within the tribe.
The situation continued as it was until 2017, which, perhaps by sheer coincidence, became the pivotal year in Argany’s journey, after which everything changed.
In May 2017, Lafy was killed in an attack on an area near the village of Barth, the union’s stronghold. This was followed, two months later, by another attack that claimed Mansi’s life. In August of the same year, Dalah announced his withdrawal from politics “in all its forms, in word and deed.” He retired to his home in Ras Sudr, content with managing some of his affairs and publishing memoirs until he passed away suddenly in his residence in September 2022. With Lafy’s death and Dalah’s retirement, Argany was the sole member of the trio remaining. From that moment on, his title changed from “one of the emblems of the Tarabin tribe” to “the head of the Union of Sinai Tribes.”
During this time, the union’s methods changed. Instead of volunteering to combat terrorism and supporting the Armed Forces, union membership became akin to a job, where every member carried a weapon and received a monthly salary according to their role, whether as a commander or a footsoldier. Some of them obtained “membership cards” — Mada Mar obtained one them — issued by a security entity, allowing them easier movement through checkpoints and crossing points on the Suez Canal.

These benefits led many tribespeople who were unemployed to join the union. This led to the emergence of the Haytham Knights. The group was named as an homage to Haitham Ayad Abou Garad, who was killed in clashes with Province of Sinai militants in 2020, and was made up of members from the Romaylat tribe, along with other groups comprising members of Sawarka. It was the first time since its establishment that the union, under Argany’s leadership, included representatives from other tribes. 
After assuming control, Argany began expanding his operations rapidly. The Sons of Sinai Company announced that it is unique in not only being able to provide you a pathway to ship goods to Gaza but that it would also protect them “from the beginning of the road to its end.” Argany’s Misr Sinai also began exporting goods to Gaza. Brigadier General Luay Zamzam, who previously served as the head of the military intelligence office in North Sinai, began making appearances alongside Argany as the deputy chairman of the company’s board of directors.
Argany extended his control to another area of movement through the Rafah crossing by establishing another company, Hala for Tourism Services and Consultancy, in 2019 to provide VIP travel services from the strip to Egypt. Thus, Hala became the third in the Seven Mountains group after Sons of Sinai for Contracting and Misr Sinai. Argany’s grip over the Rafah crossing was only furthered with the establishment of another company bearing the Sons of Sinai moniker. This one was called Sons of Sinai for Construction and Building, and the new company announced its  cooperation with Misr Sinai in managing the reconstruction of Gaza after the 2021 aggression with a $500 million grant provided by the Egyptian state.

By the end of 2021, Seven Mountains group comprised Sons of Sinai for General Contracting, Sons of Sinai for Construction and Building, Misr Sinai for Industrial Development and Investment, Hala for Tourism Consultancy and Services and Itous for Security Services — which contracted with the Egyptian Football Association to secure sports events — among other companies.
In January 2022, the group changed its name to the Organi Group. In the same month, Sisi appointed Argany as a member of the Sinai Development Authority as a representative of companies and investors, after the approval of the defense minister, which had already been issued in November. Argany established almost absolute control over various businesses in Sinai, including everything related to the Rafah crossing. The Organi Group expanded its operations outside Sinai too, most notably by obtaining the dealership for BMW.
Meanwhile, new developments unfolded in Sinai itself. The war on terrorism concluded in 2022, with the Romaylat and Sawarka tribes joining in at the request of the Armed Forces. In return for their assistance, they were promised to be able to return to the lands they left in 2014, near the border with Rafah, as well as the right to fight independently from Argany’s union. This development hastened the defeat of the Province of Sinai. With the militant group no longer a threat, the state disarmed the two tribes and allowed Argany’s union to continue carrying weapons.
The Romaylat and Sawarka tribes began demanding what they were promised: the return to their lands and the cancellation of the development settlements that had been rejected by the tribes for various reasons. After delays and much stalling, they organized a sit-in in Sheikh Zuweid in August. Subsequently, sovereign authorities intervened and pledged to address their demands.

In early October, state officials sat down with tribal porters to discuss their demands. As a result, the protesters suspended their sit-in. Argany intervened in the crisis and requested the attendance of one of the sit-in organizers to a meeting in Cairo in early September. The meeting was held at one of Argany’s companies and was attended by two representatives of a sovereign entity who only listened. Argany presented a demonstration of the state’s plan in the region and assured the sit-in organizer that they would be allowed to return to their pre-2014 lands, the development  settlements would be canceled and the war-damaged villages be rebuilt, according to a leader in the Right of Return sit-in.
However, the Hamas operation that took place against Israel on October 7 and the Israeli massacres that followed complicated the implementation of these plans. The tribes reiterated their request to return but they were informed that the timing is not appropriate, according to one of the sit-in organizers. Attempts to reconvene the sit-in ended with the arrest of dozens of protesters, who remain imprisoned until now.
However, according to various tribal and civilian sources, Argany and his union carried on without a clear goal. They began making appearances at various events, raising many questions about the nature of their influence. On the last day of October, after nearly a month since the start of the aggression on Gaza, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbuly visited North Sinai. Argany sat alongside Madbuly on the speakers’ platform and delivered a speech. Following the speech, he accompanied the delegation, which included artists, media personnel and ministers, to lay the foundation stone for the development settlements project that the tribes had previously rejected. And of course, the Sons of Sinai had obtained the contracts for the construction.
The prime minister’s convoy moved through Sinai, preceded by the union’s cars, in what appeared to be security provided by the union for the visit — a level of presence that caught the attention of many. The questions further multiplied when, in early February, Argany’s name was placed  directly under Sisi’s, the font the same size, as sponsors of a relief convoy heading to Gaza.
The fate of hundreds of thousands stranded in Gaza under bombardment is intertwined with the story of the political and economic rise of one  person over the past decade in Egypt: Argany, the king of the crossing and the primary mediator for the authorities in Sinai.

*Pseudonym