What is the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is a small piece of land in the southwest corner of Israel. It is 360 square km (224 sq mi)^. That is about the size of two Washington, DC’s. It is bordered by the Mediterranean on the west, Egypt to the south and Israel on the north and east. 1.5 million Palestinians live there.
Who is in control of the Gaza strip, and how did that come about?
The Gaza strip is governed by Hamas, which came to power after elections in 2006. Initially, power was to be shared between Hamas and the other leading party Fatah. Because of the terrorist histories of both organizations, Israel and the Quartet (Russia, the US, the EU, and the UN) began economic sanctions against the Palestinian territories, to be lifted when they renounced violence, and accepted Israel and all previous treaties. In June 2007 Hamas fighters expelled or killed many Fatah supporters in Gaza, leaving Hamas in control. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization because it has sent suicide bombers into Israel, and its charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Because of its status as a terrorist organization and its inability to provide security, Israel and Egypt began a blockade in 2007, allowing in only enough goods to prevent a humanitarian crisis. Fatah gained some control over the West Bank, which is occupied by Israel. Because they no longer engage in terrorism, they are supported internationally and by Israel.
What is the history of Gaza?
The land of Israel/Palestine has been under many empires over the past 3000 years. To keep things simple, we can begin at 1900. At that time, Gaza was just a small part of the Ottoman Empire. Because the Ottomans were on the losing side of WWI, Britain and France acquired most of the Empire. Britain controlled the Palestine Mandate, which included Gaza, Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan—though they weren’t called by those names yet. Jews had been fleeing persecution in Europe, and had started Zionism—a movement demanding a national Jewish homeland. At the same time, local Arabs began asserting their right to national independence. The Jews tried to force the British out of Palestine, and eventually the British left it up to the newly-formed UN to resolve the matter of competing nationalist movements. UN Resolution 181 of 1947 established two states according to population densities. The Arab Palestinians got 3 sections of contiguous land- Gaza and some extra, the majority of central Palestine including the West Bank, and a northern section by Lebanon. The Jewish Palestinians got more land, but not in contiguous sections, and the largest section—the Negev desert in the southern half of the country—was not arable. The Jews accepted this partition, and the Arabs did not, leading to a series of violent attacks. In 1948, the Jews declared the independence of the State of Israel, which was promptly attacked by 5 Arab armies (and a few extra.) A ceasefire was declared in 1949, and Gaza was under Egyptian control.
At this point begins the Palestinian refugee crisis, which I won’t go into now because it is extremely complicated. Palestinians fleeing the violence of the 1948 war fled their homes, but were mostly not admitted into other Arab countries. Those that ended up in the Gaza Strip were not given Egyptian citizenship, and they lived in refugee camps. In the Six Day War of 1967, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt (among territory from other countries.) Jewish settlers from Israel built communities there. When peace was established between Egypt and Israel in 1979, Israel evacuated its settlers from the Sinai and returned it to Egypt. Egypt was not interested in the Gaza Strip, and it remained under Israeli control. The Gaza Strip went through phases of freedom and restriction, violence and peace. Notably, the first intifada—uprising—began in Gaza in 1987. An estimated 1,100 Palestinians were killed (in Gaza and the West Bank) by Israelis during the first intifada, which lasted until 1993. An additional 1000 Palestinians were killed as “collaborators” by other Palestinians.* This was not an armed uprising, but rather one involving strikes, public demonstrations, and throwing rocks at soldiers.
The 1994 Oslo Accords transferred power from the Israeli military to the Palestinian Authority. Israel still maintained control over Gaza’s borders, coast, and airspace. Its electricity comes from Israel, as does most of its sewage and infrastructure. Egypt agreed to monitor its border with Gaza, and Israel monitors the crossing there with cameras*.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip, forcibly removing all of its citizens. While it no longer had any military or civilian presence in the Strip, it still controlled borders, airspace, immigration, etc. That brings us up to 2006, which we’ve already gone over.
I gathered the information here from a number of different websites, and verified much of it with books in my house. Wikipedia.org is surprisingly helpful, and I found that it was rarely unbalanced. A few articles contained notes about lacking citations or being biased. Wikipedia keeps you on your toes. I tried to be objective, but I think a Gazan writing this would have told it differently.
*wikipedia.org
^https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
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