Since Israeli tanks and soldiers took control of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, May 7, humanitarian aid deliveries and civilian evacuations have been halted. Behind the scenes, the Israeli maneuver did not help the business of a man who never ceases to make a name for himself in Egypt. Thanks to his close ties with the Egyptian intelligence services, Ibrahim Al-Organi, 50, has gained a virtual monopoly on the management of entries and exits to and from the Palestinian enclave in the space of the last decade. He is nicknamed the "King of the Rafah crossing."
By 2019, his company, Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, was offering wealthy Palestinians a "VIP service" that freed them from the security and bureaucratic hurdles that made crossing the terminal a living hell for the average Gazan. After the outbreak of war, the company established itself as an obligatory intermediary for civilians fleeing the fighting, in return for a prohibitively high crossing fee of $5,000 (€4,600) per adult.
At the same time, Abnaa Sinai (Sons of Sinai), another of his offshoots, has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to oversee the transit of truckloads of goods and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave. In just a few months, according to an investigation by The Times, the Rafah business would have earned his group, christened Organi, profits of at least $88 million.
This Bedouin chief, a former smuggler, has become a key figure in Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's regime. His meteoric rise from obscurity to prominence, from prison to the inner circles of power, coincided with the reign of the Egyptian president, who turned him into a wealthy businessman at the head not only of a powerful conglomerate, but also of an armed group resembling a state militia.
On May 1, Al-Organi was elevated to the head of the Union of Arab Tribes, bringing together chiefs from some 30 Bedouin tribes across the country. With El-Sisi himself as honorary president, the organization has no official military mandate, but it controls a large number of armed men. Its mission is to defend the country's sovereignty and protect its borders, in particular with Gaza and possibly with Libya and Sudan.
Originally from the powerful Bedouin tribe of Tarabin, Al-Organi was born in 1974 in the town of Sheikh Zuweid, in the north of the peninsula, where he started out as a cab driver, dabbling in smuggling between Gaza and Israel.
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