Who Has Lived in Gaza ?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

We know that the city of Gaza was mentioned in Egyptian documents of the 15th to 13th centuries BCE.  In those days it served as a base for Egyptian expeditions to the North.  That was about 3,421-3,221 years ago.            

    Dagon, the National Philistine god  appears to have also been worshipped as a fertility god in Ebla, Assyria, Ugarit, and among the Amorites.  There were  temples for him at Ashdod and elsewhere in Gaza.  He was originally a weather-god.   His being associated with clouds, and thus with rain indicates his strong role as an agricultural god besides being half fish. This brought on the stories of mermaids.  The Hebrew word for fish is dog (daled-gimel).                                     

 In the 12th century (1100s BCE) it was captured by the Philistines (Israel's worst enemy)  and remained the most important of their 5 coastal cities.  It was where they honored their Temple of Dagon.  Although allotted to the tribe of Judah, it remained in Philistine hands. 

Who were the Philistines?   They were a Mediterranean people  from Asia Minor and Greek localities.  They came in waves.  Philistines came in conflict with Abraham and Isaac.  Another group came from Crete after being repulsed from Egypt by Ramses III in 1194 BCE.  King David (1010-970 BCE) ended their era of Philistine domination and overran Philistia.  When the Israelite kingdom was hit by the Assyrians, the Philistines re-established their independence but were never thereafter a serious factor.  Later, in the Persian and Greek Periods, foreign settlers-chiefly from the Mediterranean islands, overran the Philistine district.  From the time of Herodotus, Greeks called Palestine after the Philistines;  Syria- Palaestina, and under Hadrian, the Romans gave the name officially to the former land of Judah.                                                          

       Gaza was the place of imprisonment and death of Samson.  Here he is bringing down the Temple of Dagon. Samson was of the tribe of Dan and a Nazarite from birth.  He was the main fighter of the Philistines.  He fell into their hands because of the deceit of his lover, Delilah.  She got him to come to her in Gaza during one of their festivals.  Samson had importance besides his strength.  He was one of the Israelite judges before the days of kings. 

When the Exodus led by Moses arrived at their destination of Canaan, Gaza was land allotted to the tribe of Judah as it was part of the large section.  Judah  was the largest population of all 12 tribes, arriving with 76,500 people. 

                                                                 

In 720 BCE, it was annexed by Sargon, king of Assyria(721-712 BCE),  when the Israelites were attacked and taken away to Assyria in 721 BCE.  He had seized the throne on the death of Shalmaneser III during the siege of Samaria (northern part of Israel).  In 720 BCE he had defeated a military alliance which included the remnants of the Israelites of Samaria.  In the end he was assassinated and was succeeded by Sennacherib.  

In 521 BCE it again was annexed by Cambyses of Persia,  father of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II), younger son of Cyrus I,.  Judah had already been attacked in 597 and again in 586 by the Babylonians, with most of the population taken away to that country. 

Alexander the Great recolonized it as a hellenistic city in 332 BCE.  He was the king of Macadonia.  His personality won over the Israelites (Jews) he visited Jerusalem and paid the high priest great honor.  It was like he was Big Brother and did much for the Jews.  Many since then have named their children Alexander.  After his death, it was disputed between the Egyptian Ptolemies and the Syrian Seleucids until annexed by  Antiochus III of Syria (223-187 BCE) in 198 BCE.                                

Then it became independent in 110 BCE. only to be recaptured by Alexander Yannai, king and high priest of Judea,  in 96 BCE.  It was declared a free city to General Pompey (106-48 BCE)  of Rome  in 61 BCE.  Then Pompey terminated Jewish independence however, enjoyed since Simon the Maccabee.  He had captured Jerusalem and the Temple and Judea was made a tributary and stripped of the territories acquired by the Hasmoneans.  

                                                                     

A Jewish population lived in Gaza throughout the Middle Ages, as did a Samaritan community until its capture by Napoleon in 1799.  Gaza was the center of Sabbetaism, followers of Shabbetai Tzvei, a false messiah,  in the 17th century.  Its Jewish inhabitants left in 1917 which was the end of WWI.  The few subsequently returning left during the 1929 Arab riots.  It became the main city in the Gaza Strip which in 1949 had a population of 30,000, being swollen by many refugees from Israel's War of Independence 29 November 1947-1949.                                            

                              Moshe Dayan in 1956  60 years ago, as he eulogized a ‘thin blond lad’ named Roi Rotberg killed by Palestinian gunmen on the Gaza border, the IDF chief of staff wasn’t aiming to set out the Zionist ethos for generations. But that’s what he did.  When Dayan learned that Rotberg had been murdered by the border — drawn out on horseback, alone, by Palestinian gunmen in a nearby wheatfield and then killed and mutilated and dragged to the Gaza side of the border — he went into his room and wrote a eulogy. It took him half an hour. This was a 7 day war where Egypt had tried  to blockade Israel and it closed the Suez Canal to all movement of Israeli shipping, and the Tiran Straits at the entrance to the Gulf of Eilat to all movement of vessels to or from Israel.  

Gaza was captured in Israel's Sinai War November 1956 by Israel forces who remained there until March 1957.  It again passed under Israeli rule during the 6 Day War in 1967.  A census taken later that year showed 119,000 population.  Today there are 2.048 million.                                                                     

The Gaza Strip is the area of land from the border of Egypt along the coastline for 22 miles with an average width of 8 miles.  This was the result of the Egyptian advance into the Negev in May 1948 and the Israel offensives of October to December 1948 which drove them out of the entire area, with the exception of the Gaza Strip.  The area remained under Egyptian rule according to the Armistice Agreement of 1949.  The Gaza Strip became the focus of military and political tension in 1955, and in November 1956, was captured by Israel forces in the course of the Sinai Operation.  Under UN and especially, USA pressure, Israel returned the Gaza Strip in March 1957, when Egyptians resumed control with a UN Emergency Force stationed along the border with Israel. 

 In May 1967 the UN secretary -general U Thant acceded to a demand by Premier Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt to withdraw the UN force thereby precipitating the events leading to the 6 Day War (he was rapidly defeated, losing his air force and much of his army as well as the entire Sinai peninsula.  Russia helped him to re-arm his forced)  when the Gaza Strip again passed under Israel control.  It had been the scene of frequent unrest.  The 1967 census found 352,260 in the Gaza Strip of whom 172,520 were refugees. 

The Israeli disengagement from Gaza (Hebrew: תוכנית ההתנתקות‎, Tokhnit HaHitnatkut) was the unilateral dismantling in 2005 of the 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of Israeli settlers and army from inside the Gaza Strip.  They had left everything for the Palestinians in the name of Peace.  Israel was to relocate the Jews somewhere in Israel.  

Following the withdrawal, Israel has continued to maintain direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings, it maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and controls the Palestinian population registry, and Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.                                          

Since Israel has left, rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel.  Since 2001, Palestinian militants have launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip as part of the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. The attacks, widely condemned for targeting civilians, have been described as terrorism by the United Nations, the European Union, and Israeli officials, and are defined as war crimes by human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The international community considers indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets to be illegal under international law. International law has done nothing about it.  

From 2004 to 2014, these attacks have killed 27 Israeli civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at least 11 Palestinians and injured more than 1900 people. Their main effect is their creation of widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among the Israeli populace. Medical studies in Sderot, the Israeli city closest to the Gaza Strip, have documented a post-traumatic stress disorder incidence among young children of almost 50%, as well as high rates of depression and miscarriage.       

                       

                                             

  

Kite fire has been added to the Palestinian arson which results in forest and field fires, burning crops and precious trees.  So have balloons carrying fire.  

                                                                

Through rocket fire and kite fire through 2014 until 2021, Israel is  answering attacks.  In May 2021, violence between Israelis and Palestinians escalated, following clashes and demonstrations in Jerusalem. In May 2018, tensions erupted when the U.S. Embassy relocated to Jerusalem. Presidents before Trump had promised to do this, and Trump was the 1st to follow through on his promise.  Perceiving this as signal of American support for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinians responded with protests at the Gaza-Israel border, which were met with Israeli force resulting in the deaths of dozens of protesters.                                    

                     Tunneling done in Gaza , bringing in ammunition

December 2019 reported that Israel was struck by over 2,600 rockets and mortars over past two years.

April-May 2021 saw days of rocket fire from Gaza coming in by the thousands. Events on the Temple Mount precipitated the attack.   

All told, the only people we know who have lived in Gaza have been Egyptians, Philistines and Jews. Now the Palestinian Arabs live there.  

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel