How It Became the Center of Decades of Conflict

The border between Gaza and Israel has once again become the focal point for clashes between protesters and Israeli troops, as Palestinians commemorate the anniversary of their expulsion from Israeli land and demand “a right to return” and the end of the decade-long Israeli blockade on the strip.

This week’s demonstrations are the culmination of weeks of protests at the border — but how did the location become such a flashpoint?

Gaza’s Borders Established

Due in part to its desirable coastal location, the land now known as Gaza has been fought over from time to time for centuries, but the modern conflict over the region dates to 1948. Before that time, the area known today as the Gaza Strip — a 140-square-mile stretch of land hugging the Mediterranean coast — was under British colonial rule as part of its larger post-World War I “Mandate for Palestine.” The region had for centuries been home to a Muslim Arab majority and small Jewish and Christian minorities, but as European Jews fled in the years around the Holocaust, the Jewish population grew sharply — as did Western support, particularly in the U.S. under President Harry Truman, for the idea of finding a home for the Jewish people.

In 1947, a newly formed United Nations approved a plan to partition the region into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Palestinian Arabs, backed by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, rejected the plan, as it gave them less than half the land despite their outnumbering Jewish residents two to one. But the leaders of what was to be Israel agreed to it and moved ahead on their own. On May 14, 1948, on the day of Britain’s departure from the region, Zionist groups lead by David Ben-Gurion declared Israel a state. The first Arab-Israeli war broke out the next day.

Egyptian forces set up a base in the town of Gaza and attempted to drive the Israelis back but, by that autumn, the area they controlled around the town was just about 25 miles long and 5 miles wide. When Egypt and Israel reached an armistice in February, the borders of the Gaza strip were drawn up and it remained under Egyptian control.

Egyptian Rule

Three quarters of a million Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the land that became Israel during 1948, during a period they call “al-Nakba” or “The Catastrophe.” Even though Egypt controlled Gaza, the Palestinian refugees who ended up in the Gaza Strip were not allowed by the government to pass into the rest of Egypt. Having lost their homes and livelihoods, around 500,000 people became dependent on U.N. aid.

Gaza remained under Egyptian military rule until the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956, when Egypt nationalized that major shipping route in defiance of Britain and France, preventing Israeli ships from passing through the canal. In response, Israel invaded Gaza, occupying the strip for a year before international pressure forced them to give it back to Egypt.