I’m not surprised that there have been no claims of responsibility for the tragedy.
Perhaps, of course, it wasn’t caused by a terrorist attack.
But I’m still not surprised, even if it was.
In Israel/Palestine, by and large, terrorists haven’t targeted tourists. I can think of only one tourist death resulting from terrorism in a very long time, and I’m inclined to regard that instance as most likely inadvertent. Palestinians depend upon the tourist trade for their livelihood at least as much as Israelis do.
In Egypt, however, terrorists have sought to bring the government down by destroying the Egyptian economy — which, in modern times, has relied to a substantial degree upon tourism. Most Egyptians don’t depend upon tourist money, though, and probably few if any of the hardcore Islamists are involved in any part of the tourist trade.
Historically, violent Islamists have, in fact, directly targeted tourists (as in the notorious Luxor massacre of 1997, the 2014 Taba bus bombing, the 9 January 2016 attack at Hurghada, and many other such incidents). In the overall picture, such attacks have actually been quite rare. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists have visited Egypt over the past twenty years, and there have been very few deaths relative to those high numbers. But such attacks have occurred, and much more than once.
There’s no question that terrorists would like to topple the Egyptian government, and that destroying Egypt’s tourism economy would be a major step in that direction. And such destruction can be accomplished by simply making people nervous about going there. Nothing major would be gained by openly identifying themselves as the perpetrators. That would simply draw down upon their heads the vengeance of the al-Sisi government, which would be fierce. (President al-Sisi was, until recently, a general in the Egyptian army, and he’s tough.)
As I say, though, it is of course possible that no terrorism was involved in this very sad story. We’ll probably know considerably more over the next few days.
Posted from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
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