The hidden toll of Ras El-Hekma

On the morning of the second day of Ramadan, Moussa Khamis(*) woke up to find bulldozers and security forces surrounding his home in the village of Al-Hashayma in Ras El-Hekma, demanding immediate evacuation.

Despite having lived on this land, planted with fig and olive trees, for decades, the fifty-year-old man finds himself forced to leave 50 feddans (210,000 square meter) of agricultural land in exchange for a compensation that does not exceed 150,000 Egyptian pounds per feddan, and a 1000 square meter plot to build an alternative home in the Shams El-Hekma area.

“My house had a wooden roof, but I swear to God, if you offered me a chalet in the fanciest resort on the North Coast, I’d still say no. I live in peace on six feddans overlooking the sea, where I keep livestock and grow palm trees. This has been my life since my grandparents’ days,” Moussa told Al Manassa, expressing deep sorrow over losing his land.

The demolitions endured by Moussa and others are part of the first phase of the Ras El-Hekma project, one of the largest joint investment ventures between Egypt and the UAE. Spanning two kilometers along the North Coast, the deal was signed in February 2024 between the Egyptian government and Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company/ADQ, with an estimated value of $35bn.

Initial construction has already begun through a consortium of Egyptian, Emirati, and international companies. Matrouh Governorate designated the Shams El-Hekma desert area south of Ras El-Hekma as a relocation site for residents. However, the area’s soaring real estate prices, driven by interest from investors, have made purchases and construction harder for those who received compensation.

Land as a tool of sovereignty

The Ras El-Hekma project has thrown Moussa and some 22,000 other residents into a whirlwind of social and economic change. It reflects the state’s approach to land as an instrument of governance and an avenue to wealth, while marginalizing Bedouins, the area’s original inhabitants, according to political sociologist Aly El-Raggal.

The state’s management of land and desert communities can be traced back to the rule of Muhammad Ali (1805–1848) and his successors, who sought to control territories and subdue tribes using a mix of stick and carrot. To discourage their nomadic lifestyle, the state granted Bedouins farmland.

Post-1952, land management policies changed significantly. Reforms in 1961 and 1964 increased state control over desert lands, culminating in Law 143 of 1981, which regulated ownership. A 2024 amendment to this law allowed foreign ownership for the first time.

Land is central to sovereignty and the exercise of state power in Egypt. It is also the locus of social conflict, even within the state apparatus itself. According to sociologist Aly El-Raggal, this applies to “all the vast deserts. That’s why some peripheral areas have always posed challenges when it comes to asserting sovereignty and collecting taxes.”

Historically, Bedouin communities have suffered from neglect and the government’s chronic slowness in registering land ownership, said Qaddoura Al-Ajni, a resident of Ras El-Hekma and author of “Matrouh: Land, People, and History”.

According to Al-Ajni, governments under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak made limited attempts to regularize ownership, but it was mostly focused on existing buildings or farmland, not undeveloped land or seasonal agriculture, which make up the majority of Bedouin land holdings.

The term “land access rights” refers to the ability of individuals and communities to use, control, and benefit from land. Al-Ajni said the state is inconsistent “The law stipulates the right to acquire ownership of land by adverse possession after 15 years, subject to specific conditions. But in Matrouh, it’s a different story. The law is never applied here regardless of the number of years.”

A new approach

Over the past decade, the Egyptian state has pursued a strategy of asserting ownership over unregistered lands tenured by occupancy (wad’ al-yad). This has coincided with extra powers for certain state agencies to sell land or partner with the private sector, as seen in the Ras El-Hekma project.

“The regime is working on two main tracks,” said El-Raggal. “Social engineering and the control of residents and their movement, and that’s why we see widespread displacement within cities. The second, is revenue maximization, treating land as a quick and valuable asset to extract income by selling it to Gulf investors.”

At least 2.8 million people have been displaced from Greater Cairo as part of urban restructuring efforts aimed at extracting land value, Urban planning researcher Omnia Khalil says. However, there are no available estimates for how many residents have been relocated from the North Coast and Matrouh areas to make way for resort developments.

The displacement of Bedouin communities in Egypt’s northwest is not new. El-Raggal traces it back to the late 1980s, during the rise of neoliberalism and the launch of coastal resorts. “Now the state wants to expand even further, aiming to exploit the land for mega-projects seeing land as the primary source of wealth. To do that, the state simply pushes people out. Every major tourism project in recent years has involved displacing residents.”

Tribes in the midst of transformation

The development of tourist resorts along the North Coast, starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, triggered major social changes for Bedouin tribes in eastern Matrouh. These communities, once reliant on grazing and agriculture, gradually shifted towards tourism-related jobs.

Muneim El-Obeidy, a researcher on Bedouin affairs, explains the transformation. “From Matrouh to Salloum, that is to the west, you still find traditional ways of life: reliance on rainfall, seasonal farming of wheat, barley, figs, and olives. Besides herding.”

To the east of Matrouh, in contrast, Bedouin life has been transformed due to the spread of resorts. “Most locals now rely on jobs in tourist villages. Many moved from farming and herding into construction, carpentry, and metalwork. In the east, tourism created an economic boom,” El-Obeidy adds.

The main tribes in Matrouh include the Gomayat, Qut’an, Sanina, Ali Abyad, and Ali Ahmar, with several sub-branches extending across Matrouh, the North Coast, and Burg al-Arab onto Alexandria, Sharqiya and the Nile Delta to the east. In Ras El-Hekma, the most prominent tribes are the Sanagra, Harabi, Gomayat, Zua’irat, Shuttour, Gawasem, Moussa, and Mahafeez.

Locals have reaped certain benefits, according to El-Obeidy. “Incomes have risen, especially for those contracting with the tourist resorts. This opened up many new opportunities. Some now own heavy equipment, supply companies, brick factories, and sand quarries. They also employ their relatives, creating a cycle of economic activity,” he told Al Manassa.

An uncertain future

Residents of Ras El-Hekma are anxious “Our lives changed overnight. We don’t know what tomorrow holds,” Qaddoura Al-Ajni spoke for the community, echoing Moussa Khamis.

Al Manassa spoke to four residents who agreed that locals face multiple challenges, including the government’s pressure for rapid evictions and the delay and inadequacy of compensations. According to Atiya El-Zu’eiri of the Zu’eirat tribe, bureaucracy and corruption are also of concern. Ibrahim Sangar, a tribal elder from the Sanagra, said, “Some officials block our claims unless we pay bribes.”

The government set compensation for buildings at between 2,000 and 5,000 pounds per square meter. Unregistered land was valued at 150,000 pounds per feddan, and registered plots at 170,000 pounds, until a 2024 deal with the UAE raised the rate to 300,000 pounds per feddan.

Locals are demanding compensations that reflect today’s market prices. Many said what they received was based on 2018 valuations, when negotiations with the state began. Sangar said he received two payments, one in 2021 and another in 2024, after prices had soared. El-Za’iri said he has only received one installment so far. “When a feddan is worth 2 million pounds and you give people 150,000, how is that lawful?” he asked.

Mamdouh El-Derbali, former head of the Matrouh Bar Association and legal representative for several families, called the compensation gap a “crime” and “injustice” that legally invalidates the contracts. He plans to sue.

Al-Derbali described the situation as “a crime of forced transfer,” insisting that compensation must be determined by law, not the state. “Expropriating land for public benefit requires fair compensation at the time of seizure, not from years before,” he said, calling the current process “a legal sham” and an assault on the constitution and private property.

Moussa Khamis rejected the government’s allocation of only 1,000 square meters per family in Shams El-Hekma for residential construction. He questioned how he could sustain his livelihood after giving up 50 feddans of farmland, with no agricultural alternative or permit for commercial activities.

Sheikh Ibrahim Sangar agreed, criticizing the Shams El-Hekma development for failing to consider their Bedouin way of life. He built a home there under pressure to evacuate, only to learn that the area would be designated a satellite city servicing Ras El-Hekma and subject to strict building codes and revocable permits. “Was I supposed to sleep in the street with my kids until they decide? What were we supposed to do?” he asked.

“Everyone is trying to figure out their own solution—buying a shop or bulldozer, learning a trade, or looking for an investment opportunity,” Al-Ajni said.

He warned that the most dangerous impact was rending of the tribes’ social fabric. “We’re seeing demographic fragmentation. Families that once lived in a tight-knit area have been scattered—some moved to Shams El-Hekma, others to southern Matrouh, others still to southern El-Dabaa.”

Informal compensations

The grievances reflect a historical pattern by the Egyptian state of failing to provide alternatives or integrate people into economic planning. This vacuum has led to the emergence of informal mechanisms of compensation, according to researcher Aly El-Raggal, including ghafra and agara—practices that have drawn criticism towards Bedouin tribes.

Ghafra refers to mandatory guard services provided by tribes to protect development projects, typically arranged directly with the developers in exchange for wages. Displaced individuals are sometimes granted the “right” to supply building materials to these projects. Agara, on the other hand, is a form of informal levy imposed by tribal groups on buying, selling, and building activities in new developments on their ancestral lands. The term is derived from the Arabic word for real estate (aqara), with a local pronunciation where the letter qaf is softened to a g.

El-Raggal traces the emergence of these practices to the 1990s, coinciding with the coastal real estate and tourism investment boom under then-Housing Minister Hasaballah El-Kafrawy, who sought to capitalize on remittances from Egyptians working in the Gulf by building resort villages.

“Most land along the North Coast is historically owned by locals but not officially registered,” El-Raggal explains. “Investors were faced with the problem of unclear ownership, and the solution was informal: they paid the state, and then locals were compensated based on customary arrangements. Ghafra and agara were the locals’ way of claiming a share, especially in the absence of other income sources.”

He adds that the Egyptian state has historically “created and tolerated extra-legal systems in these areas, preferring to manage them informally rather than impose strict legal order to avoid rebellion or organized crime.”

Ibrahim Sangar defended the Bedouin position on ghafra and agara, saying, “It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. I’ll provide security and protect the site from theft in exchange for the land you’ve taken and will profit from. I can’t just walk away and leave everything. How am I supposed to feed my family? Besides, as an investor, you’re going to hire security and contractors anyway, so why not me?”

El-Derbali, however, dismissed this as wholly inadequate: “What kind of development is it when you seize people’s land and then hire them to guard it? You’re asking a community of hundreds of thousands of families to settle for supplying cement and gravel, when the land was their only source of livelihood.”

Al-Ajni agrees, noting that these informal practices, particularly agara and construction supply deals, have had a destructive effect on tribal cohesion. They’ve fueled disputes within and between clans over who controls access to the financial benefits.

Union of Arab Tribes: intermediary or state tool?

Recently, a group calling itself the Union of Arab Tribes emerged as an institutional body claiming to represent Bedouin interests. In an August 2024 meeting, it discussed the issue of land ownership in Matrouh. Its president, Ibrahim Al Organi, also met with Emirati investors and Ras El-Hekma residents, ostensibly to “facilitate development in the region.”

However, three sources from Ras El-Hekma told Al Manassa that the union played no actual role in facilitating negotiations with the state or compensation distribution. “They have no real presence on the ground, and we’ve never heard from them,” said one resident who has been directly negotiating with the government on behalf of others.

El-Derbali, of the Gomayat tribe, accused the tribal union of “representing state interests, not the people.”

When Al Manassa reached out to Ahmed Raslan, vice president of the Union and its representative in Matrouh, he denied saying “Negotiations happen directly between the residents and government officials. We are not involved, either directly or indirectly.”

El-Derbali warned that the Union’s existence could undermine tribal cohesion, posing a threat to national security. “We oppose dividing the Egyptian people along tribal lines. That will create conflicts of interest and lead to disputes among the tribes.”

El-Raggal adds that Egypt has always had tribal unions, “but this new level of institutionalization is unprecedented. It’s extremely powerful and highly structured. It’s dangerous for sure.”

“If residents had been genuinely integrated, none of this would be a problem. But now you have entire communities living on the margins, and that’s a serious threat,” he believes. 

“There’s something colonial about the state’s behavior, displacing inhabitants, forcing everyone to negotiate, and driving them into corruption and violence.”

As the legal representative for several families, El-Derbali intends to sue the government and issue formal notice to the UAE Embassy, ADQ, and the Egyptian Cabinet to force a halt to what he called forced transfer.

“We’re fighting over civil rights and economic rights. We’re not asking for much—just fair compensation. But taking people’s livelihoods and throwing them into the desert, leaving them to fend for themselves, what’s that?” he said.

Moussa Khamis' future remains uncertain. “They tell us we’ll benefit later and get construction jobs. But I’m a farmer. That’s all I know. And what if the Gulf investor says, ’I don’t want locals, I’ve got my own contractors’? Then what?”

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(*) Name changed at the source's request.