Saint Catherine's in Egypt, a major pilgrimage site on Mount Sinai, is worried about a mega real estate project

Egypt is completing a mega real estate project on these isolated lands in southern Sinai designed to attract mass tourism to the town of Saint Catherine, a major pilgrimage site with its ancient Orthodox monastery and mountain hiking trails.

Heritage experts and local residents accuse the construction work of having already damaged the site, a UNESCO World Heritage site and nature reserve. It is home to the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world and to Bedouin tribes, who are now worried about their ancestral lands.

"The Sainte-Catherine we knew no longer exists. The next generation will only know these buildings," laments an experienced guide from the Jabaliya tribe, pointing to a five-star hotel near an olive grove where the beeps of a bulldozer reversing drown out the birdsong.

Like several witnesses interviewed by AFP about this project with a budget of nearly $300 million, dubbed "Great Transfiguration" or "Revelation of Saint Catherine", this guide asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals.

"We have to call things by their name: disfigurement and destruction," thunders John Grainger, former manager of a local development project led by the European Union.

The small town of red brick houses dotted with orchards is now overrun with hotels - not yet open - including a sprawling complex from the Steinberger group, with a conference center and hundreds of residential units.

In July, the activist group World Heritage Watch called on UNESCO to put the site on the list of endangered heritage sites.

But last month, the organization elected Khaled El-Enany, former Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, as its head. It was during his tenure that Egypt launched the project and demolished entire sections of the historic City of the Dead cemetery in Cairo – also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Mutiny at the monastery

On the edge of the megaproject, at the foot of the biblical Mount Sinai, two dozen monks in black robes maintain the ancient sanctuary.

In May, an Egyptian court ruled that the monastery was on state-owned land and that the Greek Orthodox monks were merely "allowed to use it," sparking a diplomatic row with Greece and a flurry of indignant reactions from Orthodox patriarchates.

Egypt defended the court decision which, according to its critics, leaves the place of worship and its occupants at the mercy of the authorities' goodwill.

In September, the Archbishop of St. Catherine was forced to resign after an unprecedented mutiny linked to his stance during the crisis.

Despite the tensions, the monks open their doors every morning to visitors, mainly hikers who get up at dawn, accompanied by guides from the Jabaliya tribe.

Each year, these Bedouins in traditional tunics accompany hundreds of thousands of worshippers and travelers.

For decades they have been demanding better public services and infrastructure to lift their community out of poverty. Long marginalized, they now fear that development projects will come at their expense.

"No room for us"

In 2022, bulldozers razed the town's centuries-old cemetery and hundreds of deceased were exhumed.

"They arrived one day without saying a word and they destroyed our cemetery," the guide confided. Today, the burial site serves as a parking lot.

The office of the governor of South Sinai declined to answer AFP's questions about the local impact of the project.

In 2023, UNESCO asked Egypt to "halt all development work," conduct an impact assessment, and develop a conservation plan. This did not stop construction, which the government declared in January to be 90% complete.

Government officials tout its economic benefits and claim that the decisions were made in consultation with the community.

But locals interviewed by AFP say they have been ignored.

"Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. Maybe they'll tell us to leave, that there's no more room for us," the guide lamented.

"You know they destroyed half my house?", a septuagenarian says, seemingly casually, to a friend, as the information seems to have become commonplace in this large construction site.

Across the country, many of those who have had their homes demolished for recent tourism projects, viaducts or real estate developments complain of insufficient compensation from the state.

In Sainte-Catherine, despite the disruptions caused by the construction work and the soaring prices, many hope that tourism will bring prosperity.

But a local official expressed doubts, pointing to a nearly completed five-star hotel beyond the vineyards and cypress trees: "These hotels are enormous, the costs astronomical. Will they be filled? That's the real problem."