Checkpoints dotting Sinai’s rocky wastelands prevented the Bedouin from reaching their area’s main cash-cows: the peninsula’s tourist resorts, its oil installations and its giant cement factory.

Checkpoints dotting Sinai's rocky wastelands prevented the Bedouin from reaching their area's main cash-cows: the peninsula's tourist resorts, its oil installations and its giant cement factory.

Ideally, money from these “cash cows” should be redeployed to the stars, but the cash cows’ managers may fight to keep some of it for their empires.