Gaza - what is it?
Gaza. A small reminder. All facts presented are confirmed by primary sources. Myth one: Israel occupied Gaza. Gaza's history goes back 4,000 years. Gaza has been ruled, destroyed and inhabited by various dynasties, empires and peoples. Originating as a Canaanite (Hebrew) settlement, it was under Egyptian control for approximately 350 years before being conquered by the Philistines and becoming one of their main cities. Many Arabs claim that they are descendants of the Philistines, but the Philistines were not Semites, so this is a lie. It was in Gaza, according to the Book of Judges, that the Jewish strongman Samson brought down the Philistine palace and died under the rubble. Gaza was owned by the Assyrians, Persians, and Nabataeans. Alexander the Great also reached it. After a bloody assault in which most of the inhabitants were killed, he took the city and turned Gaza into a center of Hellenistic learning and philosophy. Gaza was gradually settled by Bedouins from the desert and Greeks, soldiers and traders. After the death of Macedon, two successor kingdoms of the great Alexander fought for Gaza - the Seleucids from Syria and the Ptolemies from Egypt. In 96 BC. Gaza was besieged and captured by the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty. When the Romans came to Judea, Pompey the Great (the same one who, together with Crassus, defeated Spartacus) recaptured it from the Jewish king Alexander Janai.Under the Romans, Gaza flourished, and the emperors patronized it. The city was governed by a senate of 500 members, including Greeks, Romans, Jews, Egyptians, Persians and Nabataeans. Under Herod the Great, Gaza again became a vassal of Judea. By that time, most of the people living in it were Romans and Greeks. In the first century, during the Jewish uprising against the Romans, it was destroyed again. After the defeat of the uprising in 132 AD. BC, the Romans expelled a significant number of Jews from the country and renamed the province of Judea “Palestine Syria” in order to forever erase the memory of the Jewish presence in these places. This is where the name Palestine comes from. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Gaza fell to Byzantium. St. Porphyry of Gaza converted Gaza to Christianity at the end of the 4th century, destroying the sanctuary of the god Marne, famous throughout the Roman Empire. Two hundred years later, Gaza was conquered by the Muslim general Amr ibn al-As, and most of the inhabitants were forced to convert to Islam. The Crusaders wrested control of Gaza from the Arab Fatimid dynasty in 1100, but were driven out by Saladin. By the end of the 13th century, Gaza was in Mamluk hands and became the capital of a province stretching from the Sinai Peninsula to the border with Syria. In the 16th century, Gaza came under the control of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire for 400 years. In 1832, the territory of Gaza was conquered for 8 years by Ibrahim Pasha, the son of the Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. The Egyptians carried out some reforms along European lines, which caused Arab resistance and uprisings in most cities of the country, which were suppressed by force. During this period, extensive research was carried out in the field of biblical geography and archaeology. It is from them that we know that all this time small Jewish communities remained in and around Gaza. The Jewish presence in Gaza ended in 2005 when Israel voluntarily withdrew. In 1917, during World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the League of Nations (predecessor of the UN) gave Britain a mandate to govern Gaza. Good days have come - with their characteristic pedantry, the British began to restore order. In 1948, after UN Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine between Jews and Arabs, the Arabs went to war and Gaza came under Egyptian rule. In 1967, Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula were captured by Israel during the Six-Day War. When Israel concluded a peace agreement with Egypt in 1978, the Sinai Peninsula was returned, but the Egyptians showed little interest in Gaza. It's a pity. During the First Intifada (a wave of Arab terrorist attacks against Israel), Gaza became a center of political activity and a major headache. The 1993 Oslo Accords placed it under the direct control of the Palestinian Authority. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, leaving the Palestinians with prosperous farmland and farms, stunning beaches and a rich fishing zone. Everything for a happy life, in order to become a new Singapore. But in 2007, Hamas won the elections in Gaza and began to sow hatred on an unprecedented scale. Singapore did not work out, the farms were burned, and in their place rocket launchers appeared and shelling of the border areas of Israel began. But in 2007, Hamas won the elections in Gaza and began to sow hatred on an unprecedented scale. Singapore did not work out, the farms were burned, and in their place rocket launchers appeared and shelling of the border areas of Israel began. In 2007, after three weeks of massive rocket attacks on civilians - after three weeks of shelling! - Israel began a blockade of Gaza (more about the blockade below). Every couple of years, in response to rocket attacks and the death of Israeli civilians, including children, Israel carried out military operations to destroy militants and launch stops. And then October 7, 2023 came. 1600 killed, raped, stabbed, burned, tortured Israelis. 200 hostages, the youngest of whom is TWO years old. 18 years after Israel VOLUNTARILY left Gaza. This is the occupation and the response to it. Myth two. Poor Gaza lives poorly. Testimony of the French journalist (Le Figaro) Adrien Jaume dated June 6, 2010: “In Gaza City, shops are overflowing with a wide variety of goods. Trays are bursting with vegetables and fruits. Electrical goods stores sell huge refrigerators, and telephone boutiques sell the latest models of mobile phones. Computers, PlayStations, toys, chic wedding dresses, medicines, spices: nothing speaks of any crisis, much less a humanitarian one.” Testimony of the Norwegian journalist Steffen Jensen (one cannot be suspected of sympathizing with Israel): “There is no shortage of vegetables, fruits or any other food products. Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, watermelons, potatoes - mountains of these products are on the shelves. I have to admit, I was a little surprised. Because when I call my Palestinian friends in Gaza, they tell me about problems and shortages. The first woman we talked to at the market confirmed this strange, contradictory negative stereotype: “We have nothing,” she said. “We need everything! Food, drinks... everything!” She described an apocalyptic scenario, standing between mountains of vegetables, fruits, eggs, poultry and fish.” Testimony from the Deputy Director of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip, Matilda Redmat (April 2011):“There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.” So there is food and consumer goods in Gaza, but most people don’t have the money for them. Why? Let's figure it out. In 2009, Gaza received $948 million in American aid. In 2010, the US and the EU gave it $413 million, and in 2011 - $514 million. Sweden (47 million), Great Britain (45), Norway (40) and the Netherlands (29) gave. And so all this time. Gaza received over $1.18 billion in donations in 2021 and over $1.17 billion in 2022 from various countries and organizations. WHERE IS THIS MONEY? Where are the hospitals and schools built on them, where are the cultivated fields, where are the factories producing all sorts of useful things, where are the houses and roads? Where are the jobs created? There is none of them. Because these billions were spent on TENS OF THOUSANDS of missiles, mines, diversion tunnels, because instead of hospitals they built bunkers for the Hamas military command, and launchers were placed in existing hospitals, schools, and residential buildings. And after Israel destroyed these tunnels and bunkers, they built them again. What was not spent on wars went into the pockets of Hamas leaders. Journalist Palki Sharma Upadhyay (India) wrote in 2021: “The leaders of Hamas, including the head of the Politburo Ismail Haniyeh, long ago left the Gaza Strip and live in other countries of the world - Turkey, Qatar and Lebanon. They live in first-class apartments in Beirut, Doha and Istanbul, wear expensive suits, fly on private jets, and their children are involved in luxury real estate. One of Haniya’s sons, Maaz, is engaged in real estate in Turkey, the other, Abdel Salam, formally the chairman of the Palestinian Youth Council, constantly has fun in Turkey, spending huge amounts of money.” According to Globes (2014), Haniya's net worth is estimated at $4 billion.Most of his assets are registered in the name of his son-in-law Nabil. The fortune of Khaled Mishal, another Hamas leader, is 5 billion, the fortune of Musa Abu Marzouk is 3 billion. Not bad for the children of impoverished Palestinian refugees who vowed to devote their whole lives to the struggle. Wrestling turned out to be a very profitable business. So the poverty and unemployment of Gaza are a consequence not of the Israeli blockade, but of the corruption and militarism of Hamas leaders. Myth three. Israeli blockade International law does not require any country, including Israel, to keep its border with an independent territory where a hostile population lives open. No defensive measures taken in response to enemy attacks are qualified by international law as collective punishment. All the time that the so-called blockade lasts, a flow of products, things, materials from Egypt, from Israel, from the sea flows into Gaza, partly smuggled, partly as part of humanitarian aid. Israel is constantly creating humanitarian corridors. What are the materials obtained through these corridors used for? You guessed it, to create rockets and tunnels, to hold children's camps in which five-year-olds march with machine guns and shout “Death to the Jews!”, and teenagers learn to kill. Yet Israel periodically allows these materials into Gaza, allows Palestinians into Israeli hospitals, allows family reunifications - making sure over and over again that none of its kind gestures are reciprocated, but doing them again and again in order to remain within the bounds of humanity. Myth four. Hamas is fighting for the liberation of Palestine. Why do we need to liberate Palestine? To improve the lives of the Palestinian people, right? But Hamas spends the lion's share of international aid not at all on raising living standards - on military needs. Why is he doing this? Because Hamas has one goal - to stay in power for as long as possible. And during a war it is easier to suppress resistance, steal, put public funds in your own pocket - the war will write off everything. War - any war - justifies the fight against dissent, a decline in living standards, and rigid ideological boundaries. War makes a fighting person significant, people who only know how to kill - what will they do if peace suddenly comes? They don't know how to build. The old tried and tested method remains - appoint an enemy, blame him for all your failures - and fight, fight. The more dead and wounded in the next mess, the higher the degree of hatred towards the “enemies” fueled by propaganda. So the need for even the most recent concern disappears - not about the well-being, for that matter, just about the safety of one’s own people. Conclusions • The Gaza Strip NEVER belonged to the Arab country called Palestine and was never taken from it by Israel. For the simple reason that such a country has never existed. • Israel COMPLETELY withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. • In 2007, Gazans voted for Hamas in elections, which immediately began firing rockets at Israel from within the Gaza Strip. • The blockade came into effect in 2007, two years after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, when the frequency and intensity of Hamas rocket attacks made life in Israel's border areas absolutely unbearable. Israel periodically opened a humanitarian corridor, each time receiving increased shelling in response. • Billions of dollars were donated to the Gaza Strip, but were used to purchase or manufacture weapons, to build terrorist tunnels, and for the personal enrichment of Hamas leaders. • From 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza, to 2023, more than 20,000 (!) rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli civilians. WE DID NOT START THIS WAR! Just as we didn’t start the previous one, and the one before it, and the one before it, and all the wars that we are forced to wage. But in response to the murder of children and women, in response to the taking of hostages, in response to rocket attacks of unprecedented intensity, attacks from which there is nowhere to run, because they are now shooting at us from both the south and the north, we must not remain silent, we must not endure and complain to the UN. We have every right to answer as we see fit.