Why is Gaza so central to the Palestinian struggle? From Israeli +972 Magazine [View all]

[Nanjeanne]

Absolutely fascinating but very long and detailed article by Dr. Anne Irfan, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies at University College London.

The history of Gaza illuminates why the tiny enclave has long embodied Palestinian identity — and is now the focal point of a major regional crisis.

More than half a century after beginning its occupation of the Gaza Strip, there are mounting signs that Israel is using its current military offensive to remake the territory completely.

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While defending its actions in Gaza as necessary and denying accusations of war crimes, the Israeli government is describing its war in existential terms. Hamas’ raid on October 7 was one of the deadliest attacks on Israel in the state’s history. For the first time since 1948, Israeli forces temporarily lost control of territory within the Green Line, as Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis, injured more than 5,000, and kidnapped about 240 people, the majority of them civilians. The impact on the Israeli psyche, and the resulting collective trauma, has been profound.

Capitalizing on such feelings, the Israeli government, with the wide support of the public, has framed the attack on Gaza as a battle for survival. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has said “it’s either them or us,” and described the air-and-ground assault as “a war for Israel’s existence as a prosperous Jewish state in the Middle East.” Netanyahu has dubbed it “the second war of independence.”

Yet these bombastic statements jar with the fact that Gaza, at least on the surface, appears as little more than a tiny speck on the globe. How has such a small piece of territory — comprising less than 1.5 percent of historic Palestine, and smaller than most U.S. cities — become the focal point of a major national, regional, and global struggle?

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The article details the long history from the beginnings through 1947 and 1948

The events of the Nakba produced the modern-day Strip in both territorial and demographic terms. Egypt, which had joined other Arab states in declaring war on Israel in 1948, signed an armistice agreement with its new northern neighbor in February 1949. The armistice established the Gaza Strip with its current borders — a significantly smaller stretch of land than that designated by the UN in 1947 — under Egyptian administration.

At the same time, the creation of the Israeli state forcibly expelled and displaced at least three quarters of the Palestinian population, creating 750,000 Palestinian refugees. While this exodus transformed the demographics of the entire Levant, nowhere received more refugees per head than the Gaza Strip. Home to around 80,000 residents prior to the Nakba, by the end of the 1940s it had absorbed more than 200,000 refugees, tripling the area’s population. The Strip’s dense population in the 21st century, two-thirds of whom descend from those first refugees, can be traced directly to the impact of the Nakba.

It continues through the 50s and early 60s

Despite its severance from the rest of Palestine, though, Gaza remained closely intertwined with the rest of the world in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was integrated into the Global South’s anti-colonial solidarity politics, especially after Gamal Abdel Nasser took the Egyptian Presidency in 1954, regularly citing the Palestinian cause as key to his pan-Arab leadership.

Accordingly, this period saw leading anti-colonial figures visit the Strip, including Che Guevera in 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960, and Malcolm X in 1964. All three of them visited refugee camps during their time there, highlighting the significance of the Palestinian refugees to the Strip’s politics and national aspirations.

Nonetheless, this period was not one of liberation for Palestinians. They were still living as a stateless people under Egyptian rule — first under a British-backed autocratic monarch until 1952, and then under the Free Officers’ regime that would come to be dominated by Nasser.

history to 1967

While 1967 is usually cited as the starting point of the Israeli occupation, the Gaza Strip had already experienced an interlude of what was to come a decade earlier. In late October 1956, Israel invaded and occupied the Strip as part of its joint attack on Egypt with Britain and France, following Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. The Israeli army took over the Strip, coming face-to-face with many of the Palestinian refugees it had expelled just a few years earlier.

While that first Israeli occupation only lasted 4 months — ending at the command of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who threatened to sanction Israel if it refused to withdraw — researchers have uncovered evidence of Israeli plans from that time for a longer-term presence in the Strip, and even the construction of Jewish settlements. When the Israeli army re-conquered Gaza a decade later, in June 1967, such plans were resumed, initiating the longest-running military occupation in modern history.

The 80s

Twenty years into the Israeli occupation, an entire Palestinian generation had grown up knowing nothing else. By the late 1980s, Israeli settlements were expanding and even prospering while Palestinians remained stateless and impoverished. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, the Sabra and Shatila massacre that year, the failures of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the rightward shift of Israeli politics following Likud’s rise to power in 1977, all added to Palestinian anger.

Experiencing the most acute forms of dispossession and military rule, Gaza became the birthplace to perhaps the most significant Palestinian uprising of the past century: the First Intifada.

The spark came in December 1987, when an Israeli army vehicle crashed into a Palestinian car in the Gaza Strip, killing four people; three of them lived in Jabalia camp, home to refugees who had been expelled from villages in southern Palestine during the Nakba. While Israeli authorities insisted the crash was accidental, many Palestinians were skeptical given the widespread experience of brutality and disinformation by the army.

The 90s and on.

I really recommend anyone who wants an in depth history with fascinating details and context - read this long magazine article. I pulled out tiny amount to give sense of how it is written but can’t follow DU rules and give the scope of the piece. It really is only for those interested in the complex details.

Link https://www.972mag.com/history-gaza-strip-palestinian-struggle/]