A German reporter from the German public TV's studio in Cairo attempted to get reports about increasing religious radicalisation of the tribes on the Sinai out to the public to no avail. He had done all the journalism, but the media at home wasn't interested.

Only during the revolution in Egypt he was finally able to push tiny bits of info to the public during interviews (not during the news time slots itself).

So this Sinai thing was apparently visible early on for someone in the region and the escalation was predictable by approx. 2009 or maybe earlier.

I doubt this rather remote and barren place is going to produce more than a few irritations, though: An occasional shot at ships in the Canal, at Israeli or Egyptian border guards, some extortion of Gaza smugglers, maybe some extremists from the mainland going into hiding in Sinai.

Egypt as a whole has enough of an incentive to keep the canal usable.