A short history of Gaza

[Cute Badshah]

From 2500 BC to about 1100 BC Canaanites lived in Gaza. The term "Canaanite" itself does not refer to any particular racial or ethnic attribute. They were idolaters and worshipped a family of gods while their primary god was El.
In about 1190 BC the Philistines of Aegean origin captured Gaza. They were defeated by Israelite King David in the 10th century BC.
It later came under Assyrian rule followed by Persian.
The Roman Empire invaded the region in 63 BC which continued till the end of the Empire when the Byzantine Empire captured it.
Prior to the advent of Islam during the 4th and 5th century Gaza was mainly inhabited by Christians as part of the Byzantine Empire.
The Prophet Mohammad visited Gaza more than once before prophet-hood. It is said that the prophet's great grandfather Hashim ibn Abd Manaf lived in Gaza as a merchant.
In 634 AD, during the reign of Caliph Abu Bakr, Gaza was besieged by Muslim army commanded by Amr Bin Al-aas and Khalid Bin Walid, until it fell to the Muslims. After the Muslim occupation, churches were converted into mosques while Christians and Jews were given the option to convert, pay Jizya or face dire consequences. Hence, many fled and a very insignificant Christian and Jewish population remained till the Ummayad and Abbasid periods. (661-1258 AD)
It was in Gaza that Imam Shafi wrote his "fiqah". And in 796 AD the city was destroyed during infighting among Muslim Arab tribes.
In 909 AD it became part of the Fatimid Caliphate ( A Shia caliphate descended from the daughter of the Prophet named Fatima.
In 1100 AD Gaza was invaded by Byzantine Christians as part of the Crusades- military campaigns launched to regain Christian territories lost to the Muslims.
In 1187 it was re-conquered by Salah-ud-Din Ayyubi who founded the Ayyubid dynasty and remained a strong advocate of jehad. However, the bulk of Saladin’s activities from 1174 until 1187 AD involved fighting other Muslims and eventually bringing Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, and other cities under his control.
The Ayyubid period of rule virtually ended in 1260 after the Mongols under Hulagu Khan completely destroyed Gaza. It was followed by Mamluk rule.
In 1516 Gaza was Invaded by the Turks and incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. In 1832 the Egyptians captured it. In 1842 it was recaptured by the Turks defeating the Egyptians.
After Turks were defeated during World War I, Gaza became a British mandate.
In 1948,when the state of Israel was one day old it was invaded by Arab armies of all neighboring countries. They were all defeated and Gaza was again captured by Egypt.
In the 6-day Arab-Israel war of 1967 Israel recaptured it and Gaza remained under Israeli occupation until Oslo Accords were implemented in May 1994 and Israel handed over power to the Palestinian Authority.
(To be continued)

Waseem Altaf The writer is a social media blogger.

[Cute Badshah]

A short history of Gaza II

In view of the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, the PLO was committed to finding a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to relinquish all forms of terror and to revoke the clauses in the Palestinian National Covenant which negate Israel's right to exist. Following these decisions, Israel agreed to recognize the PLO as the Palestinian people's official representative for any peace talks.

Israel's willingness to see the PLO as a legitimate peace partner was a dramatic change in policy, since up until then it was considered a terror organization and any and all contact with it was prohibited by law. Both parties agreed to Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the Jericho area of the West Bank by 2000.
The PLO moved to validate its renunciation of violence with a change of organization and name. In 1994 the PLO became the Palestinian National Authority, or simply the PA -- Palestinian Authority. Israel also began giving up territory in Gaza and the West Bank.

But in 1995, an Israeli radical, angry over the Oslo Accords, assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Palestinian "rejectionists" -- many of them refugees in neighboring Arab countries who thought Arafat had betrayed them -- began attacks on Israel.
In November 2000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and then later the PFLP and the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, began conducting suicide bombings and other armed operations. There were over 150 such attacks from 2000 through 2005, compared to 22 incidents from 1993 to 1999 by Islamist opponents of the Oslo process.
In 2005,all Jewish settlements in Gaza were evacuated, and the Strip was sealed by a wall adhering closely to the Green Line.

In January 2005, following the death of Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority with the backing of his Fatah party. In the January 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, Hamas won a majority of 77 out of 122 seats. Its victory over second-place Fatah in the popular vote was a much narrower 44.45 to 41.43 percent.

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas affiliated military wing, had launched attacks on Israel, against both civilian and military targets. Attacks on civilian targets included rocket attacks and, from 1993 to 2006, suicide bombings.
After the Hamas' legislative victory in 2006, relations were marked by sporadic factional fighting. This became more intense after Al-Fateh and Hamas repeatedly failed to reach a deal to share government power, escalating in June 2007 and resulting in the deaths of 600 plus Palestinians and Hamas' control of the Gaza strip. By August 2007 the Palestinian Authority was split into two polities, each seeing itself as the true representative of the Palestinian people – the Fatah-ruled Palestinian National Authority in the West bank and the Hamas Government in Gaza.

To understand Hamas let me reproduce Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant of 1988, which cites the following quotation, attributed to the prophet of Islam:
"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
Following the elections, the Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union) conditioned future foreign assistance to the PA on the future government's commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements. Hamas resisted such changes, leading to Quartet suspension of its foreign assistance program and Israel imposing economic sanctions against the Hamas-led administration.

After assuming power Hamas Talibanized Gaza. Mixed gatherings were banned,women were forced to wear hejabs ,asked to stay at home and accept polygamy. In 2007, Islamic group Swords of Truth threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they didn't wear strict Islamic dress. In 2009, Hamas banned girls from riding behind men on motor bikes and scooters and forbade women from dancing. In 2009, Asma al-Ghul, a female Palestinian journalist, stated that Hamas policemen attempted to arrest her under the pretext that she came to a Gaza beach dressed immodestly and was seen laughing in public.
The same group claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes, music shops and pool halls, which they considered places of vice. There has been widespread banning of books in the Gaza Strip. In 2007, the banning of a book of Palestinian folk-tales, "Speak, Bird, Speak Again", which is a collection of 45 Palestinian folk tales, because of some supposedly lewd content, caused an outcry . In May 2010, a previously unknown militant group calling itself "The Free of the Homeland" issued a statement criticizing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), for running camps in the Gaza Strip "teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality". Two days later, about 20 men armed with assault rifles attacked a UNRWA-run summer camp. The assailants tore up large plastic tents and burned storage facilities at the site, Crazy Water Park, one of the Gaza Strip's most popular entertainment sites, was closed down by Hamas for allowing mixed bathing. Two weeks later, the site was set on fire by a group of unknown gunmen. Men are banned from swimming topless and applying hair-gel.

On 12 June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered. IDF initiated an operation in the West Bank aimed to find them (not until June 30 were their bodies found). Israeli authorities have named two Hamas members as prime suspects: Amer Abu Aysha and Marwan Kasim. The increased tensions soon escalated, and a full military operation began on July 8.

Waseem Altaf