A monumental project underway at the sacred foothills of Mount Sinai encapsulates the core doctrine of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt. The Great Transfiguration Project, a state-led initiative aimed at building a luxury tourism hub complete with hotels, villas, and a cable car, is officially framed as a gift to the whole world and deemed a cornerstone of Egypt’s Vision 2030, with the government promising economic revival and the enhancement of this global spiritual site.

Beneath this veneer of progress lies a more complex reality. This project is a stark manifestation of el-Sisi’s governance model that embraces a state-centric, military-led vision that prioritizes the spectacle of modernization over equitable development, triggering the dispossession of local communities and exposing a profound hypocrisy in its foreign policy.

The New Republic’s Doctrine of Development

The Sinai project is a key pillar in the construction of Sisi’s “New Republic”,  a political system where legitimacy is derived not from public consensus but from a hyper-nationalist narrative of state-led achievement. Grandiose infrastructure projects serve as tangible symbols of a powerful and competent state, a substitute for genuine political and economic reform. This doctrine is fueled by a revived state capitalism, with the Egyptian Armed Forces at its helm. Enjoying tax exemptions, free labor, and unparalleled access to land, the military spearheads these developments, crowding out private investment and centralizing economic power.

This model is defined by elite capture, where public resources are funneled into projects that benefit a loyal, select few. While the state touts job creation and prosperity, its reliance on heavy borrowing for these economically draining megaprojects has deepened the national debt and worsened the economic crisis for ordinary citizens. The magnitude of the Sinai development thus serves a crucial political purpose: to create a symbolic victory that distracts from systemic economic failures and the increasing impoverishment of the population. It can be argued as a spectacle of progress that is valued far more than its substance or significance.

Voices from the Periphery: Dispossession and Resistance

The human cost of this doctrine is borne by the local communities whose ancestral ties to the land are being severed. At the heart of the controversy are the Jebeleya Bedouin, the traditional guardians of Mount Sinai and St. Catherine’s Monastery for centuries. Their homes, eco-camps, and even cemeteries have been demolished or disturbed to make way for new infrastructure, often with minimal or no compensation.

Critics warn the project is reshaping not just the sacred landscape but also the lives of the local Bedouin tribes who have called the region home for centuries. British travel writer Ben Hoffler, who has long worked with Sinai’s tribes, told the BBC that what is emerging is “a new urban world imposed from above” on a community of nomadic origin that never asked for it. Despite government assurances of jobs and opportunities, mistrust runs deep. Many locals believe they will be sidelined in favor of outside workers, leaving them alienated from their ancestral homeland.

This top-down approach extends to the ancient St. Catherine’s Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site. A controversial Egyptian court ruling declared the monastery’s land state-owned, reducing the Greek Orthodox Church’s historical stewardship to a mere right of use. Archbishop Ieronymos II of Greece condemned the move, stating the monastery’s property was being seized and expropriated, posing an existential threat. UNESCO’s repeated calls to halt construction have been ignored, demonstrating the state’s willingness to assert unilateral control over a globally significant cultural site, triggering diplomatic friction with Athens and alienating the international preservation community. This treatment of the Bedouin and the monastery is not an accident; it is the logical outcome of a development model that views local heritage and communities as obstacles to its central vision.

The GERD-Sinai Paradox: A Coherent Inconsistency

The Sisi regime’s unilateral approach in Sinai stands in stark contrast to its diplomatic posture on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). In the GERD dispute, Cairo masterfully plays the role of the patient multilateralist, appealing to international law and condemning Ethiopia’s “intransigent positions” and attempts to “impose a fait accompli“. Egypt’s letters to the UN Security Council denounce unilateralism and champion the principle of shared resources.

Yet, within its own borders, the regime practices the very unilateralism it decries. The Sinai project is a “fait accompli” imposed on its own citizens and a sacred global site, proceeding despite fierce opposition from the Bedouin, the Greek Orthodox Church, and UNESCO. This reveals a glaring double standard in the application of sovereignty. While Cairo argues the Nile is a “shared resource” and rejects Ethiopia’s claims of sovereignty, it asserts absolute and unchallenged sovereignty over Sinai, dismissing the historical and cultural rights of its inhabitants.

This is not a contradiction but a consistent application of a single, coherent ideology of el-sisi’s government: the state’s will is supreme. Whether countering a foreign nation’s control over a vital resource or overriding the rights of an indigenous community to realize a national project, the objective remains the same. Both are framed as matters of existential interest, justifying any action necessary to achieve the state’s goals and reinforcing a hyper-presidential system of military guardianship.

Strategic Fallout

While intended to project strength, the Sinai project carries significant strategic risks that threaten to undermine the regime’s stability. The Sinai Peninsula has a long history of insurgency rooted in Bedouin grievances of marginalization and economic exclusion. By exacerbating these exact grievances—displacing tribes, desecrating sacred sites, and centralizing economic benefits—the project risks fueling resentment and creating fertile ground for a resurgence of conflict in a strategically vital region.

Internationally, the project has backfired. Billed as “Egypt’s gift to the world,” it has instead caused diplomatic friction with Greece and drawn condemnation from cultural heritage bodies, damaging Cairo’s credibility as a responsible steward of world history. This echoes the 1956 Suez Crisis, where Nasser’s unilateral action, though a domestic political victory, drew intense international scrutiny and intervention. Similarly, asserting absolute control over a site of global religious importance risks eroding Egypt’s soft power and strategic standing.

The “Great Transfiguration Project” is a microcosm of the Sisi regime’s core doctrine. It reveals a state that prioritizes symbolic grandeur over sustainable development, and central control over community rights. The stark contrast between its condemnation of unilateralism abroad regarding the GERD and its practice of it at home in Sinai exposes a governance model where the state’s will is absolute, deployed against whomever it defines as an obstacle; be it a foreign power or its own people. This soft power gamble, designed to bolster the regime’s legitimacy, is far more likely to deepen long-standing internal fissures and tarnish the very international image it seeks to cultivate.

By Tsega’ab Amare, Researcher, Horn Review