I think Beirut has first dibs on the rebranding effort. At they it was ONCE known as the ‘Paris of the Middle East’. Gaza’s sort of got that ‘place that’s always been fucked’ image going. Gonna be hard to sell past that.
Hey, Gaza was a hip and happening place when the Phillistines ruled it. And, I dunno, there was a famous university there in the 6th century, and another one in the 8th century. Then in the 17th century, Nathan of Gaza, Shabbetai Zevi’s enabler and PR guy, lived there for a while. It hasn’t had a great run lately, admittedly…
It was never claimed by Egypt as Egyptian territory.
In a nutshell:
-
It was part of the British-ruled Palestinian Mandate.
-
When the Mandate came to an end, in 1948, it was claimed by the All-Palestine Government, a body recognised by Egypt (and most or all other members of the Arabl League). The All-Palestine Government was, in practice, a client of Egypt, and in practice the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt or at its direction, but Egypt did not formally annex it, and did not offer residents Egyptian citizenship. Instead, residents of Gaza (most of whom had been displaced from other parts of the former Palestinian Mandate) were issued with Palestinian passports by the All-Palestine Government.
-
The All-Palestine Government came to an end when it was merged into the United Arab Republic (along with Egypt and Syria) in 1959. The UAR came to an end in 1961, when Syria seceded. In practice, throughout this time and afterwards Eqypt continued to administer the Gaza Strip through military occupation, without claiming to annex it as Egyptian territory (in much the way that Israel administers the West Bank, except that Egypt had no policy of settling its own citizens in Gaza).
-
In 1967 the Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel, which did not seek to annex the territory but did establish a number of settlements there for Israeli citizens.
-
In 1979 the Israel/Egypt Peace Treaty provided for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and to dismantle its settlements, though in fact this took many years to accomplish. Egypt agreed that the Gaza Strip would remain demilitarised, and renounced any claims to the territory (though in fact it had never advanced any). The final status of the territory was left undecided.
-
In 1994, governmental authority was assumed by the Palestinian Authority.
-
In 2005, Israel completed its military withdrawal from the Gaza strip, and the dismantling of its settlements.
-
In 2007, the Palestinian Authority split, with a Hamas-controlled breakaway running the Gaza Strip (not under Israeli occupation) and a Fatah-controlled authority running the West Bank (under Israeli occupation).
-
Current Status of the Gaza Strip is that it is subject to the authority of the Palestinian Authority, but that authority is not effective and in practice it is run by Hamas. It has never been part of either Egypt or Israel, and its residents are not entitled to either Israeli or Egyptian citizenship. The Palestinian authority will issue them with travel documents if asked, but these enjoy little recognition internationally. Most of the residents are either people displaced from what is now Israel, or the descendants of such people, and they identify not as Egyptians or Israelis but as Palestinians.
Because Hamas, in de facto control of Gaza, had fired around 700 rockets into Israel in 2014 (prior to July). Last year, they had fired only around 40. The escalation was intolerable to Israel… and would be to any nation.
Because, too, Israel - the day before the three teenagers were kidnapped and killed - apparently hit a Hamas big shot on his scooter with a missile, killing him and his 2-year-old son. Hamas is retaliating.
Of course, like everything else related to the middle-east, may be misinformation or misinterpreted.
The sad answer is that like the Hatfields and McCoys, this fight has been going on since before 1948 with nastiness and no logic on both sides.
Egypt was happy to dump Gaza on Israel and say “that’s your problem now”.
At first, Israel took the best land in the middle of Gaza and gave it to a group of Israeli farmers. Israel gave up trying to control Gaza, and gave up trying to defend a kibbutz plunked into the middle of Gaza that effectively split Gaza in two pieces for the benefit of those few Israeli farmers around 2007. Of course, when the Israeli famers objected, the IDF used water cannon not tank rounds to get them out of there.
As I understand it, the offer to residents of East Jerusalem required them to give up all other claims to citizenship. Long term, as part of a settlement, the Palestinians want Jerusalem or some claim to it, as it lies within the pre-1967 boundaries of what belonged to the Palestinians. Giving up claim to Palestinian citizenship means acknowledging Israel’s claim, plus the very real possibility the local fanatics will kill anyone who gives in to Israel.
(when I took a tour through the Kotel Tunnels, alongside the temple mount, the guide mentioned that they wanted the tunnel to come out at the spot where the original access to the cistern was - however, the Palestinian shop owner there refused to sell, even for over a million dollars, since it would likely mean he would be killed even if he wanted to sell. )
Most neighbours of Palestine have too many refugees in their country from the 1948 and 1967 wars, and they are a burden, and have seriously destabilized, for example, Lebanon and Jordan. They don’t want more people, they have no guarantee a visiting Palestinian will go back to the hell of Gaza. Egypt does not want a camp with a million Palestinians in north Sinai, and they don’t want to give the Israelis the satisfaction of a way to push all the occupants out of Gaza as a way to “solve” the problem. Besides, that would just mean Hamas would launch missiles from Sinai (which they’ve already tried from time to time) thus adding to Egypt’s headache.
Cite?
As I said: Of course, like everything else related to the middle-east, may be misinformation or misinterpreted.
Oddly, if you try to Google Israeli missile, child killed, Hamas killed, scooter, Gaza, or any combination of keywords like that - you get a huge number of stories involving Gaza, dead children, etc. I first saw the claim in some other discussion on Gaza not long after the rocket barrage statred, along with several other claims such as there is no actual evidence that Hamas committed the kidnapping and murder of the 3 Israeli teenagers.
Of course, all Googling did was prove to me (as if I didn’t know already) that invective and misinformation or twisting the fact all the way to outright lies is rampant on both sides of the propaganda divide - no surprise when you consider the rest of the situation, the lives at stake and the mess that a century of conflict has created.
I doubt that a single Hamas and his child killed in Gaza merited much mention in the news before the current flare-up, so no surprise if a cite cannot be found.
As for the OP question, read this for a bit more detail:
It mentions Hamas is responsible for issuing Gaza Palestinian passports.
And for some of the difficulties they encounter in travel, read this:
Basically, entry visas to many countries are hard to come by even to visit.
Just FYI, I read this before posting the thread. It was clear as far as the Palestinian Authority, but there’s quite a bit it did not say. UDS’s post was really useful.
So - you’re taking that nugget back?
I don’t know if it is true or not. Someone mentioned it in a discussion I saw.
BTW, relevant to travel info note this travel restriction from the US consulate for some US citizens:
In a discussion that has any integrity, if you can’t back it up, you withdraw it.
Your timeline is factual. Thank you for not repeating that moronic cliché “they’ve been fighting for hundreds (or thousands) of years over there…” Actually, they’ve been fighting since the 1920s. Not quite 100 years.
You did not mention the numerous tunnels (some a mile long) which Hamas has dug through the border in order to both kidnap Israelis (the ultimate objective for them as they would ask a high price for their release) or kill them.
The Arabs have been fighting the Jews since the 1920s due to the British white paper to establish a Jewish state in a portion of their mandate. Plus the fact that the Jews wanted a state of their own. That is anathema to the Arabs. They don’t want no friggin’ Jewish state there. Prior thereto they got along very well. In fact I read in one book that an Arab was asked his opinion of the Jews in the early 1900s (shortly after a mass emigration to that land by Jews who bought much land from the owners, sponsored by Baron Rothschild). That Arab said he loved the Jews: they were good for the land.
An interesting history of that part of the world, primarily Israel, from the early 20th century is Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Of course, it is one person’s view, an Israeli, but it provides what appears to be pretty balanced background into the current animosities and grievances that are evident on both sides, starting back when there was a good degree of coexistence among various groups of settlers. One does not have to try to trace the millennia of conflicts there to get a grasp of the situation, but it does help to see what people there remember, themselves, or have heard from their own parents and grandparents. That’s the real history for the people who live there today. And that’s a good part of what animates current hostilities.
Actuallly, the Israelites stole it from the Caananites about 3,000-plus years ago, based on a promise preceding the Balfour Declaration and coming from a higher authority - written in stone, if you will. The Canaanites no doubt stole it from someone else before that, and so on. Yes… That piece of land, like any other, has been fought over since war was invented. It’s just not the root cause or a continuation that results in the current problems.
The current problems, IIRC, owe their start to the British cleverly making contradictory promises to both Arabs and European Jews in the early 1900’s during and after WWI. Britain took the area as spoils from the Ottomans. Both sides sought to collect on those promises. Eventually Britain dumped the whole mess on the new UN to deal with.
As mentioned by earlier posts, both Jordan and Egypt in an effort to “help” took effective control of parts of Palestine without actually annexing it starting in 1948. This has contributed to the ineffective government and limited autonomy, and lack of universal recognition the Palestinian Authority (and so too Gaza) faces through to today.
So to answer the OP question again - the Israelis originally, after the 1967 war, tried to administer the territories directly as “occupied territories” not as part of Israel. They had difficulty finding any Arabs who wanted to participate in local government because that would be seen as collaboration by fellow Arabs, and as tools of the Israeli occupation they would often be forced to take actions unpopular with their people. (Plus, of course, the resistance/PLO fighters would try to kill them). Recognition of the Palestinian government was as much a political football of the local conflict as it was a political football of the cold war and side various governments took in it.
When Israel and Arafat’s PLO appeared to reach an agreement, this boosted the prestige of the PLO. Why the situation deteriorated is subject to the same debate as before, but it’s no secret that ignoring the Arab-Israeli conflict, the PLO of Arafat turned out to be very corrupt as rulers, to the point where they effectively lost the elections and lost control of Gaza to Hamas - not because the local population agreed with Hamas but because they seemed less corrupt.
So Israel attacks the Gaza strip, to return to the OP question, as a war to subdue a foreign territory it has occupied, but still containing a hostile armed force. The fact that the arms and capabilities seem unbalanced is irrelevant. It is a war. Just as the USA successfully invaded Iraq (as we can see to this very day) so Israel is attempting to subdue Gaza once again, likely with the same result.
March 1 1920, to be precise.
It was already “withdrawn” in the post it was stated in. It was never supposed to be a statement of fact, but a statement of the sort of thing people believe due to misinformation on both sides.
What you are doing is not trying to get him to withdraw a statement but to disclaim his argument. And, in that context, he has no reason to acquiesce.
Again, I have only this news article. Not sure what his source is… apparently if Israel kills a child out of the blue in Gaza it’s not widely reported. Or, the author may have fallen for a fabrication. Or, it may be true.
That post is from an Arab spokesperson. To begin with, the PLO is known to fake deaths of Arabs purportedly killed by Israelis. One of the links to a video on your link purportedly shows an Arab falling down after being shot, and then carried away, a common Arab ploy. Note that when that person “fell down” he reached with his arms first to break his fall. If you are shot, I do not think you will reach for the ground with your arms. Also, it is mixing geographical areas. It refers to some activities and purported deaths in the West Bank. Israel is attacking Gaza to destroy tunnels and armaments. Gaza is not occupied by any Israeli settlements and Israel is not attacking the West Bank.