Plans for mega-luxe resort spark fury as bulldozers invade site where Moses received Ten Commandments

They position it arsenic a plague of Egypt.

For centuries, Mount Sinai has been a mecca for worshippers and visitors hoping to acquisition accepted Bedouin culture. Now, nan ineffable beatified tract — revered among Jews, Christians and Muslims alike — is nether threat from a caller luxury improvement that locals fearfulness “disfigures” nan region.

Dubbed nan Great Transfiguration Project, nan state-sponsored tourism run intends to erect 5 hotels, hundreds of villas, a 1.4-acre visitors’ halfway and a shopping analyzable successful and astir St. Catherine Protectorate, New Lines Magazine reported.

The monumental undertaking, which is slated for a 2026 completion, is being billed by nan Egyptian authorities arsenic a “gift to nan full world and each religions,” the BBC reported.

Cultural preservationists disagree. “I telephone it nan Grand Disfiguration Project,” John Grainger, nan erstwhile head of a European Union task to create nan area, told New Lines Magazine.

Locals fearfulness that nan improvement will origin irreparable harm to nan world-renowned landmark, which is described successful nan some nan Bible and Quran arsenic nan tract of aggregate momentous events, including Moses receiving nan Ten Commandments and wherever he communed pinch nan Burning Bush.

The distant godforsaken locale is besides location to 6th period St. Catherine’s Monastery, nan world’s oldest continuously-functioning monastery, wherever Christian relics are housed.

It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site successful 2002.

Most susceptible are possibly nan Bedouin Jebeleya people (whose sanction virtually intends “people of nan mountain” successful Arabic), who person guarded nan monastery for hundreds of years and now service arsenic circuit guides.

While nan GTP has been billed arsenic a move to beforehand sustainable tourism while preserving nan region’s heritage, experts opportunity it’s been imposed connected nan Bedouin against their will. The Sinai tribespeople person already had their homes and tourer camps destroyed sans compensation, while immoderate were forced to exhume corpses from nan section cemetery truthful a caller parking batch could beryllium put in.

“This is not improvement arsenic nan Jebeleya spot it aliases asked for it, but really it looks erstwhile imposed top-down to service nan interests of outsiders complete those of nan section community,” Ben Hoffler, a British recreation writer who has worked intimately pinch nan Bedouin, told nan BBC. “It’s a world they person ever chosen to stay detached from, to whose building they did not consent, and 1 that will alteration their spot successful their homeland forever.”

He besides feared that nan caller resorts would apt only employment Nile Valley Egyptians alternatively of nan Sinai tribespeople.

To make matters worse, those that do speak up are allegedly clamped down upon by an intricate and omnipresent Egyptian information network.

“If they opportunity thing astir it, they get a sound connected nan doorway [from Egyptian information services],” said Hoffler, a erstwhile resident of St. Catherine. “The concealed constabulary successful St. Catherine show everything truthful intimately — telephone calls, we’ve had spyware connected telephones. They travel group virtually successful nan street. I’ve been followed galore times.” 

In fact, Greece is nan only overseas powerfulness that’s vocally opposed nan project, namely owed to their affiliation pinch nan St. Catherine Monastery.

The Greco-Egyptian tiff ramped up successful May aft an Egyptian tribunal ruled that nan monastery sat connected authorities onshore and that nan statement was only “entitled to use” nan onshore connected which it lies arsenic good arsenic nan archaeological belief sites surrounding it.

Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens, caput of nan Church of Greece, was inflamed complete nan ruling.

“The monastery’s spot is being seized and expropriated,” he declared successful a statement. “This belief beacon of Orthodoxy and Hellenism is now facing an existential threat.”

Fortunately, pursuing immoderate negotiated meetings, Greece and Egypt jointly announced nan protection of St Catherine’s Greek Orthodox personality and taste heritage.