Gaza has been a thriving oasis for many centuries, a Mediterranean transshipment point for caravans from Arabia and a crossroads between Asia and Africa. This strategic hub also made it a springboard for Middle Eastern conquerors to conquer Egypt, such as the Ottomans in 1516.
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Conversely, any general dream of conquering the Middle East from Egypt had to ensure control of Gaza. This was the case in 1799 with Napoleon Bonaparte, who, after his defeat at the walls of Acre, had to return to Cairo empty-handed, but not without crossing Gaza again.
On the other hand, General Allenby triumphed in Gaza in 1917 over the Ottoman army led by German officers, opening the way to Jerusalem for British troops, which were captured a month later. But the Israeli-Arab War of 1948 completely changed this situation, creating a “strip” of 360 square kilometers around Gaza, equivalent to 1% of Palestine, which had until then been under British mandate.
The two Israeli occupations
The 80,000 inhabitants are then joined by around 200,000 Palestinian refugees, so that the Gaza Strip now concentrates almost a quarter of Palestine’s Arab population in its narrow territory. It is also the only area of Mandatory Palestine that was neither integrated into the young State of Israel nor annexed by Jordan because Egypt decided to impose its military administration there, although without territorial claims.
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David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel, recognized very early on the danger of such an enclave on the southwestern border and in 1949 proposed the annexation of Gaza in order to resettle 100,000 refugees within Israel itself. This proposal, rejected by Egypt, caused an outcry in Israel. Gaza is essentially becoming the cradle of the Fedayeen, as the Palestinian fighters are called. The Suez Crisis of 1956 provided David Ben-Gurion with the opportunity for his first occupation of the Gaza Strip, which lasted four months and resulted in thousands of Palestinians killed (i.e. one death for every three hundred inhabitants).
After such trauma, the Gaza Strip came back under the control of Egypt, which suppressed all Fedayeen infiltration until the collapse of the Arab armies during the 1967 Six-Day War.
When Israel returned to Gaza, it faced four years of low-intensity guerrilla warfare, which was finally put down by Ariel Sharon. But even this victorious general reiterates that the area will only be permanently pacified after at least a symbolic return of the Palestinian refugees to Israel.
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