What happened to the Copts in Arish should not be surprising for anybody, giving the previous attacks against them for more than five years. ISIS has described the Copts as the "favorite catch", but the state didn’t move until several people lost their lives.
When the state to realize their suffering, the Copts were already facing death. They had no choice but to flee leaving their homes shops, businesses, schools and universities.
More than 110 families have fled to Ismailia and more are in the way. However, the Interior Ministry said it had not asked them to leave their homes, but it has not secured them as well. Security is the only reason they left their homes to unknown places where they don’t know where to sleep or eat.
It is clear that the state was surprised by what happened, but with many people trying to help, things are getting better for the displaced families. The officials have also ordered to solve problems of the Coptic families.
North Sinai is inhabited by heterogeneous ethnic groups that are not friendly and loyal to the state. Many of them have ties to the terrorist. Hamas gets married to them and buy land and real estate in Sinai.
The Islamists in north Sinai have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood that hates the regime that overthrow their government and want to embarrass them by all means. Security issues should affect investment and tourism industry badly and help sustain the economic crisis.
These groups also hate the Copts for supporting this regime and believe they were behind the success of the revolution of June 30 that overthrew the Islamic regime of the Muslim Brotherhood.
At the end, the terrorists found a doctrinal justification for targeting Copts in the text of Quran that calls believers to fight all polytheists, even if they don’t start an attack against Muslims.
This is a real problem in Egypt and the state should react immediately. On the long run, the Egyptians should move to settle in these areas, and prevent elements of Hamas from buying land in Sinai. In the short term, security forces should clean that area from terrorism and protect the people in Sinai from further attacks.
Saving the Copts in Sinai is part of the plan to save Sinai for Egypt. Evil schemes are prepared for Egypt to take Sinai away.
