The complete history of the Gaza Strip

The complete history of the Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip, Arabic Qiṭāʿ Ghazzah, Hebrew Reẓuʿat ʿAzza, territory occupying 140 square miles (363 square km) along the Mediterranean Sea, just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula. The Gaza Strip has the distinction of being a densely populated area and is not legally recognized as part of any existing country. The first accurate census, conducted in September 1967, showed a lower population than previous estimates by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Near East (UNRWA) or that of Egypt, with nearly half the population living in refugee camps. camp. Popular. (2017) 1,899,291; (2023 estimate) 2,226,544

Geography 

The Gaza Strip lies on a relatively flat coastal plain. Average temperatures range from 13°F (about 13°C) in winter and 70 to 80°F (20°C) in summer. The area receives an average of about 12 inches (300 mm) of rain per year. 

Living conditions in the Gaza Strip are generally poor for a number of reasons: 

The region's large and rapidly growing population (the region's growth rate is one of the highest in the world); inadequate water and sewerage and electricity services; High unemployment rate; and, since September 2007, sanctions imposed by Israel on the region. 

Agriculture is the economic mainstay of the working people and nearly three-quarters of the country's land area is cultivated. The chief crop, citrus fruit, is raised on irrigated lands and is exported to Europe and other markets under arrangement with Israel. Truck crops, wheat, and olives also are produced. Light industry and handicrafts are centred in Gaza, the chief city of the area. 

The President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano at the Quirinale Palace (cropped out), shakes hands with the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Rome, Oct. 17, 2009. egypt protests 2011, protests in egypt 2011 

Before They Were World Leaders: Middle East Edition 

In politically stable times, as much as one-tenth of the Palestinian population travels daily to Israel (where they are not allowed to stay overnight) to work in menial jobs. Political tension and outbreaks of violence often led Israeli authorities to close the border for extended periods, putting many Palestinians out of work. As a result, a thriving smuggling industry emerged, based on a network of subterranean tunnels linking parts of the Gaza Strip with neighbouring Egypt. The tunnels provided Palestinians with access to goods such as food, fuel, medicine, electronics, and weapons.

History Occupation 

After rule by the Ottoman Empire ended there in World War I (1914–18), the Gaza area became part of the League of Nations mandate of Palestine under British rule. Before this mandate ended, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in November 1947 accepted a plan for the Arab-Jewish partition of Palestine under which the town of Gaza and an area of surrounding territory were to be allotted to the Arabs. The British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, and on that same day the first Arab-Israeli war began. Egyptian forces soon entered the town of Gaza, which became the headquarters of the Egyptian expeditionary force in Palestine. As a result of heavy fighting in autumn 1948, the area around the town under Arab occupation was reduced to a strip of territory 25 miles (40 km) long and 4–5 miles (6–8 km) wide. This area is called the Gaza Strip. Its borders were delimited in the armistice agreement between Egypt and Israel of February 24, 1949.

 The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military rule from 1949 to 1956, then from 1957 to 1967. .From the beginning, the main economic and social problem of the region was the presence of large numbers of Palestinian Arab refugees living in extreme poverty in squalid camps. The Egyptian government does not consider the region to be part of Egypt and does not allow refugees to become Egyptian citizens or to migrate to Egypt or other Arab countries where they can assimilate. Israel does not allow them to return to their former homeland or receive compensation for lost property. Refugees are sustained largely by support from UNRWA. Many young refugees became fedayeen (Arab guerrillas active against Israel); Their attacks on Israel were one of the causes of the Sinai campaign during the Suez crisis in 1956, when the strip was captured by Israel. The strip returned to Egyptian control in 1957 after strong international pressure on Israel.

Six-Day War in Gaza 

During the Six-Day War in June 1967, the Gaza Strip was once again captured by Israel, which occupied the area for the next quarter of a century. In December 1987, riots and violent street clashes between Palestinians in Gaza and the occupying Israeli army marked the birth of an uprising known as the Intifada (Arabic intifāḍah , “to shake off”). In 1994, Israel began the gradual transfer of governmental authority in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority (PA) under the terms of the Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The new Palestinian government, led by Yasser Arafat, has struggled with problems including a stagnant economy, divided popular support, and stalled negotiations with Israel over continued withdrawal of troops and territory as well as the threat of terrorism from Islamist militant groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas. who refuses to compromise with Israel and intends to derail the peace process. Beginning in late 2000, the failure of negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel was followed by a new, more extreme outbreak of violence known as the Second Intifada, or Aqṣā. In an effort to end the fighting, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a plan in late 2003 focusing on the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip (see Israeli withdrawal from Gaza). In September 2005, Israel completed its withdrawal from the territory and control of the Gaza Strip was transferred to the Palestinian Authority, although Israel continued to patrol its borders and airspace.

Under Hamas's governance 

In the 2006 PA parliamentary elections, Fatah—which had dominated Palestinian politics since its founding in the 1950s—suffered a decisive loss to Hamas, reflecting years of dissatisfaction with Fatah's governance, which was criticized as corrupt and inefficient. Hamas's victory prompted sanctions by Israel, the United States, and the European Union, each of which had placed the organization on its official list of terrorist groups. The Gaza Strip was the site of escalating violence between the competing groups, and a short-lived coalition government was ended in June 2007 after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and a Fatah-led emergency cabinet took control of the West Bank. Despite calls by PA Pres. Mahmoud Abbas for Hamas to relinquish its position in the Gaza Strip, the territory remained under Hamas's control. 

Efforts to reconcile with Fatah 

Several efforts have been made to reconcile with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. The first agreement was reached in 2011 but did not bring much change. A new agreement was reached in 2014, in which Hamas agreed to hand over administration of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority and recognize Rami Hamdallah as Prime Minister. The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has resigned, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. However, the PA was only allowed to regain control of public institutions in the Gaza Strip at the end of 2017, after the implementation of the new agreement. However, the PA failed to achieve full governance in the area and decided to cut funding to the Gaza Strip in 2018. As disagreements continued to grow, the PA stopped operating the Rafah border crossing with Ai Updated in January 2019. Later that month, Hamdallah resigned. , ending the unity government. 

Blockade of the Gaza Strip 

Ismail Haniyeh and Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani 

In the fall of 2007, Israel declared the Gaza Strip under the leadership of Hamas a hostile entity and passed a series of sanctions including cutting electricity, strict import restrictions and border closures. In January 2008, faced with continuous rocket fire targeting its southern settlements, Israel expanded sanctions, completely closing its border with the Gaza Strip and temporarily blocking immigration. fuel export. Later that month, after nearly a week of increased Israeli blockade, Hamas forces destroyed sections of the fence along the Gaza Strip border with Egypt (closed since the takeover) that Hamas had maintained in mid-2007 until 2011), opened the door to violations through which, some estimate, hundreds of thousands of Gazans entered Egypt to buy food, fuel, and goods unavailable due to the blockade. Egyptian Grasslands. Hosni Mubarak temporarily authorized the breach to ease hardship for people in Gaza before efforts to restore the border could begin. 

In the years since Israel's blockade of Gaza was established, an organization called the Free Gaza Movement has made several attempts at sea to break the blockade. The first such mission – consisting of two ships carrying medical supplies and about 45 fighters – was authorized to reach Gaza in August 2008, and four missions in the following months were also successful. In May 2010, a flotilla arrived in Gaza where a clash between rebels and Israeli commandos occurred, in which nine of the more than 600 fighters involved were killed. 

Under Mubarak, Egypt's cooperation in enforcing the blockade was unpopular with the Egyptian public. In May 2011, four months after a popular uprising in Egypt forced Mubarak to resign as president, Egypt's interim government announced it would permanently reopen the Rafah border crossing, allowing Palestinians to cross. crossing between Egypt and Gaza. About 1,200 people were allowed to cross the border daily, though it remained closed for trade. However, in the turmoil following the ouster of Egyptian Pres. Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013, traffic through the border crossing was reduced to 50 people per day because of security concerns and was later closed altogether. 

After the PA took control of the Rafah border crossing in late 2017, Egypt began allowing 200 people per day to cross the border in May 2018. The border was closed briefly after the PA quit the Gaza Strip in January 2019, but it was reopened weeks later by Hamas. During this rare and prolonged border relaxation, tens of thousands of Gazans are believed to have permanently emigrated from the Gaza Strip. 

After months of violence between Israel and Hamas in mid-2018, Israel began easing restrictions on the blockade as part of an effort to encourage a more permanent ceasefire between the two. In 2019, Israel authorized the movement of additional goods into and out of the territory, expanded the permitted fishing area for Gazans to the largest extent in more than a decade, and began allowing thousands of Gazans to cross the border. border to work in Israel. Meanwhile, 

Qatar began providing tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip in late 2018, after Israel and Egypt agreed to allow such aid. In 2021, he spent nearly 400 million USD in this territory. 

Conflict with Israel 

In June 2008, after months of back-and-forth strikes and incursions, Israel and Hamas agreed to implement a truce scheduled to last six months. However, this was threatened shortly thereafter as each accused the other of violations, which escalated in the last months of the agreement. When the truce officially expired on December 19, Hamas announced that it did not intend to extend it. Broader hostilities erupted shortly thereafter as Israel, responding to sustained rocket fire, mounted a series of air strikes across the region—among the strongest in years—meant to target Hamas. After a week of air strikes, Israeli forces initiated a ground campaign into the Gaza Strip amid calls from the international community for a cease-fire. Following more than three weeks of hostilities—in which perhaps more than 1,000 were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless—Israel and Hamas each declared a unilateral cease-fire. 

Beginning on November 14, 2012, Israel launched a series of air strikes in Gaza, in response to an increase in the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli territory over the previous nine months. The head of the military wing of Hamas, Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, was killed in the initial strike. Hamas retaliated with increasing rocket attacks on Israel, and fighting continued until the two sides reached a cease-fire agreement on November 21. 

In June 2014 three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped; Israel conducted a massive crackdown in the West Bank and increased air strikes in the Gaza Strip, prompting retaliatory rocket fire from Hamas. As fighting continued to increase, Israel launched a 50-day offensive in the Gaza Strip on July 8. About 2,100 Palestinians and more than 70 Israelis were killed in the ensuing conflict and about 5,000 prisoners targeted attack in the Gaza Strip. Despite the damage, Hamas's handling of the conflict was viewed positively by Palestinians and boosted the group's popularity. 

In spring 2018, a series of protests along the border with Israel, including attempted border crossings and flying of flaming kites, sparked a backlash from Israel. The protests and violence peaked on May 14, when approximately 40,000 Gazans participated in demonstrations. When many of them tried to cross the border at once, Israeli troops opened fire, killing about 60 people and wounding 2,700 others. The violence escalated into military strikes from Israel and rocket fire from Hamas and continued for several months. 

Amid the occasional skirmishes, and as Egypt tried to mediate a long-term truce between them, Israel and Hamas appeared to make some effort to de-escalate tense situations. In October, when rocket fire from the Gaza Strip hit Israel, Israel concluded that the rockets had been set off by a lightning strike. In November a covert Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip was exposed, and Hamas responded by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel. Israel retaliated with more than 100 air strikes. The two sides quickly agreed to a truce, however, and, throughout 2019 and into 2020, they continued to negotiate a long-term “understanding” for the maintenance of peace and easing of the blockade. The discussions, though occasionally interrupted by brief outbreaks of tit-for-tat violence, were reinforced by halted border protests and a loosening of the restrictions on trade and travel through the Gaza border. 

A major escalation took place in May 2021. Weeks of simmering tensions in Jerusalem boiled over when Israel's Supreme Court was set to rule on the eviction of dozens of Palestinian residents in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters prompted Hamas to launch rockets into Jerusalem and southern regions of Israel,Israel responded with air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a coordinated land, sea, and air attack that caught Israel by surprise. At least 1,400 Israelis were killed in the attacks - the deadliest day for Israel since independence - and about 200 were taken hostage. Israel's response left hundreds of people dead in the Gaza Strip on the same day. The next day, Israel declared war for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.