The Gaza Strip has been the epicenter of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for a decade
But the main reason for the violent confrontation is not that the region has been governed since 2007 by the radical Islamic fundamentalist movement Hamas, which has declared the goal of liberating the whole of Palestine from Israeli occupation and establishing an Islamic state. It is about the failure to implement a UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947. On that day the UN adopted a plan to divide the British Mandate into two states – a Jewish and an Arab one.
The backstory is as follows. Britain, which had ruled Palestine since 1917, announced in February 1947 its decision to renounce the League of Nations mandate it had been given. A special committee appointed by the General Assembly recommended the creation of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, united in an economic union, and turning the area of the Holy Cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem into an enclave under international administration. But no Palestinian state in a full-fledged format has ever been created as Israel has torn away more than 60% of its territory.
Recall that the Gaza Strip is territory on the Mediterranean coast that is de jure one of the two parts of the partly recognised Arab state of Palestine (along with the West Bank territory of the Jordan River).
To the east and north the sector borders Israel, from which it is separated by a separation fence with checkpoints; to the south-west it is bordered by land to Egypt, from which it is separated by a concrete wall. The Gaza Strip is about 40km long and 6 to 12km wide. Its total area is about 360 km². The capital is Gaza City. As of July 2020, the US CIA estimated the Gaza Strip’s population at around 2 million. According to the UN plan for the partition of Palestine (1947) into an Arab and a Jewish state, the Strip was part of the territory set aside for the establishment of an Arab state.
An important detail: Israel, after 1948, annexed the border closer to Gaza City and brought the two cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod under Tel Aviv’s control. That was also when the first deportations of Arabs from the area took place, as did the seizure of land by Israeli settlers. The same pattern was observed in 1948-1950 in the Galilee region (i.e. the northern region) of the Arab part of Palestine. More precisely, the region has since then been Israeli territory without any autonomy. While in 1999, a Palestinian national autonomy was created on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, over an area of which the Palestinians were given full control.
In the 1967 war in the Middle East, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and withdrew its troops and settlers only in 2005. Despite this step, in reality Israel still controls the West Bank (59% of territory), while the UN considers this land as part of the occupied territory.
Consequently, the modern territory of the Gaza Strip is less than 40% of that defined by the UN in 1947 for a Palestinian state. But the contradictions do not end there.
Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of the future state of Palestine. The US is one of the few countries that have recognised Israel’s claim to the entire city. The Palestinians see this as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace.
In October 2007, Israel declared the Gaza Strip an “enemy state entity” and began a partial economic blockade of it, periodically cutting off electricity, cutting off energy supplies and so on. This may explain the fact that Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007 and continues to enjoy strong support from the people of the region.
There are also important economic reasons for the annexation of the northern Gaza Strip. For example, it was in Ashdod by the early 1990s that an Israeli oil refinery (refinery) was built, which remains the second-largest in the country after the refinery in northern Israel’s Haifa. Then, in the early 2000s, a trans-Israeli oil pipeline (350 km) from the port of Eilat (Red Sea) to Ashdod was built to process crude at the local refinery. And also for the prospective transit of Arabian oil to Europe via the port of Ashdod, bypassing the Suez Canal. These projects were developed in Israel back in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Recall that in October 2020 an agreement was signed in Abu Dhabi between the UAE and Israel on the transit of Emirati oil through the same artery, and at the same time Bahraini oil is planned to transit through the same pipeline. In the autumn of the same year 2020, Israel’s political and economic relations with both the UAE and Bahrain were officially normalised.
It is via Ashdod and Ashkelon – i.e. the former Gaza Strip region – that Israel plans to build a canal (approximately 200 km long) to transfer Mediterranean water to eastern Israeli farmland and the dried-up Dead Sea. The Palestinian authorities, like those in the Gaza Strip, propose that the artery should begin further south – i.e. near Gaza City – to irrigate water-stressed farmland in that sector as well.
It is obvious that all of the above-mentioned factors together explain why the Gaza Strip has been the most volatile area in the Middle East for more than 60 years.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict escalated again in early May, when Israeli authorities began evicting several Arab families in East Jerusalem. Hamas intervened in the situation. Members of the group began firing rockets into Israeli territory. Israel, for its part, launched strikes against the Gaza Strip. The parties continue to exchange rocket and artillery strikes. Experts believe the situation can escalate into full-scale war.
Alexei Baliyev, Centenary