Who Owns the Gaza Strip? The History[1]

By MG Paul E Vallely MG US Army (Ret) 

Here’s a look at the troubled modern history of the Gaza Strip:

1948 – 1967: Egyptian rule of Gaza 

Before the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948, present-day Gaza was part of the large swathe of the Middle East under British colonial rule. After Israel defeated a coalition of Arab states, the Egyptian army was left in control of a small strip of land wedged between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. During the war, some 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel – a mass uprooting that they call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”. Tens of thousands of Palestinians flocked to the strip. Under Egyptian military control, Palestinian refugees in Gaza were stuck, homeless and stateless. Egypt didn’t consider them to be citizens and Israel wouldn’t let them return to their homes. Many were supported by the UNWRA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which has a heavy presence in Gaza to this day. Meanwhile, some young Palestinians became fedayeen – insurgency fighters who conducted raids into Israel. Destroyed Egyptian armaments are seen by the sides of a road to Sinai after being hit by Israeli fighter jets during the “Six-Day War” in 1967. Photo: Israeli Government Press Office/Reuters

1967 – 1993: Israel seizes control 

Israel seized control of Gaza from Egypt during the 1967 “Six-Day War”, when it also captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem – areas that remain under Israeli control. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank, seeks all three areas for a hoped-for future state. Israel built more than 20 Jewish settlements in Gaza during this period. It also signed a peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David – a pact negotiated by late US President Jimmy Carter. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has referenced this 40-year-old treaty when he declined to permit Palestinian refugees from Gaza into Egypt, saying the potential entrance of militants into Egypt would threaten long-standing peace between Israel and Egypt. The first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in Gaza in December 1987, kicking off more than five years of sustained protests and bloody violence. It was also during this time that the Islamic militant group Hamas was established in Gaza. Children in a refugee camp near Ramallah, in the West Bank, throw stones at soldiers to protest against Israeli occupation in February 1988. Photo: AFP

1993 – 2005: The Palestinian Authority takes charge 

For a time, promising peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders made the future of Gaza look somewhat hopeful. Following the Oslo accords – a set of agreements between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat that laid the groundwork for a two-state solution – control of Gaza was handed to the fledgling Palestinian Authority. But the optimism was short lived. A series of Palestinian suicide attacks by Hamas militants, the 1995 assassination of Rabin by a Jewish ultranationalist opposed to his peacemaking and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister the following year all hindered US-led peace efforts. Another peace push collapsed in late 2000 with the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising. As the uprising fizzled in 2005, then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon led a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, uprooting all of Israel’s troops and roughly 9,000 settlers in a move that bitterly divided Israel. Hamas supporters wave green flags of the Islamist militant group in Ramallah as they celebrate its election victory in January 2006. Photo: Reuters

2005 – 2023: Hamas seizes power 

Just months after Israel’s withdrawal, Hamas won parliamentary elections over Fatah, the long-dominant Palestinian political party. The following year, after months of infighting, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. Israel and Egypt imposed a crippling blockade on the territory, monitoring the flow of goods and people in and out. For nearly two decades, the closure has crippled the local economy, sent unemployment skyrocketing, and emboldened militancy in the region, which is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Through previous wars and countless smaller battles with Israel that devastated Gaza, Hamas grew more powerful. In each subsequent conflict, Hamas had more rockets that travelled farther. The group displayed a growing array of weapons. It built a government, including a police force, ministries and border terminals equipped with metal detectors and passport control. Palestinians on Tuesday stand next to a destroyed house in Gaza City, in an area littered with rubble from buildings destroyed during the Israeli military’s ground and air offensive against Hamas.

Israel-Gaza War 

The October 7, 2023, Hamas’s attack killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw around 250 people taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory air and ground war has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many of the dead were fighters. The war has left large parts of several cities in ruins and displaced around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people. Under the first phase of the latest ceasefire, which went into effect on January 19, Hamas is to release a total of 33 hostages, eight of whom Hamas says are dead, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israeli forces have pulled back from most areas and allowed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to devastated northern Gaza while aid flows in. Negotiations on the second phase, which would end the war and see the remaining 60 or so hostages returned, were set to begin on Monday. If mediators the United States, Qatar and Egypt are unable to broker an agreement between Israel and Hamas, the war could resume in early March.

Looks like it belongs to the World!!!!!!! Arabs under Hamas are just occupying it now! It seems an agreement can happen with brightest minds looking to the future of that piece of sand on the Mediterranean for people to live, work and go to school and enjoy life! And be governed by freedom loving leaders.

1. MyNews, Middle East 2..2025

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