The history of the Gaza strip and the rising conflict
The gaza strip or simply gaza is a narrow area of land administered by Pal estinian
authorities, found on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea. It borders Egypt on
the southwest for eleven kilometres and isreal along the northeast for fifty one kilometres.
This region formerly under Egyptian administration was seized by israeli forces in the six day
war of 1967. This war also saw the recollection of the west bank. However, there has been
a long list of conflicts over exactly who should administer the area, Israelis or Palestinians.
Palestinians make up the majority of the gaza population and have high percentage of inhabitants
in the west bank as well. Despite obvious Palestinian occupation in gaza and the west
bank, Israelis have continued efforts at annexing the west bank claiming to be seeking spiritual
reunification with the ancestral home and some Palestinians even claim Israelis want
to destroy the al aqsa mosque and built the old Jerusalem temple. Resent tensions between
Israelis and Palestinians like the assault on the al aqsa mosque by Israeli police on
one of the holiest nights of the holy month of Ramadan which left several hundred injured.
Resulting in military strikes and counter strikes by both Palestinian and Israeli forces
are reminiscent of this region’s troubled past. Pointing the finger at just one group
won’t solve the problem but to understand the source of this conflict you first need
to understand the origins of the modern day state of israel and Palestine
The state of Israel began on the solemn promise to quote “ ensure complete equality of social
and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex and
to guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture”. And to
be faithful to the principles of the UN charter. These promises made by then Israeli leader
Ben Gurion are a far cry from what supposedly has become a semi apartheid state in recent
times with segregation and discrimination at its peak. The conflict however, can be
traced to the UN general assembly resolution in 1947 which adopted the implementation of
the of independent arab and jewish states and a special international regime for the
city of Jerusalem. This greatly angered the Palestinians and immediately after the final
vote numerous shootings, stoning and rioting began and went on for days. The polish and
Swedish consulates in the country were bombed due to polish and Swedish support for the
partition at the UN general assembly. Cafes were bombed and synagogues were set on fire.
Jewish cars and trucks were attacked by arab gunmen. After the termination of the british
mandate, the Israeli declaration of independence on may 14 1948, full scale war broke out,
the Jordanian, Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi armies invaded the region. The arab league
stated that the only reason they invaded area was to restore order and to prevent the violence
from spilling over into their respective territories. They went on to add that, it was also to prevent
further bloodshed. Things got a little more interesting from here.
Following the declaration of jewish independence, the arab league made a statement to the UN
secretary general on May 15 1948 one clause in particular carried the weight of their
address and that was clause 10 which quote stated that “ now that Palestine has come
to an end, leaving no legally constituted authority behind in order to administer law
and order in the country and afford the necessary and adequate protection to life and property,
the arab states set up a government in Palestine”. This act would later on lead to the self governance
of Palestine. Fat forward to September 1970, a month that would forever go down in history
as black September, due to the death of thousands of people in the brutal conflict between king
Hussein of Jordan and Palestinian revolters. This conflict also lead to the expulsion of
the PLO or the Palestinian liberation Organisation to Lebanon where they later established and
staged recurrent attacks on Israel, launching a terror campaign which aimed at hijacking
aircrafts. The conflict took another turn in 1973 when Syrian and Egyptian armies launched
the yom kippur war which was a surprise attack on Israeli forces. The Syrians and Egyptians
led the fighting for about 32 hours into the war but by the end of the second day the momentum
firmly in israel’s favour. Eventually both waring parties agreed to a cease fire snd
the yom kippur war paved the way for the camp david accords of 1978. After all this bloodshed,
you would think that maybe the conflict would finally be resolved. But if you thought this
conflict was over, you would be solely mistaken as yet again on march 11 1978 a force of nearly
a dozen armed Palestinians hijacked and shot dead 37 civilians on an Israeli bus. This
began what become known as the litany operation during which many diplomatic operations were
made which tried to end the war on the Israeli Lebanese border. The Reagan administration
negotiated a cease fire between Israel and the Palestinian liberation organisation. This
cease fire however was ended by Israel after the attempted assassination of the Israeli
ambassador to Britain, shlomo argov. Israel invaded Lebanon which led to the sabra and
shatila massacre in which 700 unarmed Palestinians were murdered. This scandal was highly criticised
by the US and European governments. It even led to the resignation of Ariel Sharon, israel’s
defense minister. If you think this conflict has dragged on for too long up to this point,
think again as in December of 1987 the intifada or uprising of the Palestinian armed forces
erupted and lasted until the madrid conference of 1991 despite all israeli attempts to supress
the tension. This uprising was firmly under the control of the Palestinian liberation
organisation which carried out terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. These armed conflicts
flickered on for months with the gaza strip being the most severely affected region after
the uprising, a total of 1,551 palestinians and 422 israelis were killed.
Many resolutions have to been made to try to prevent tensions from further escalating
between both sides and to bring peace to the region over the years like the oslo peace
process instituted by the Clinton administration and the camp david summit in 2000. However
non of these attempts have succeeded to mitigate the violence and stop the conflict. To this
present day, the Israeli Palestinian conflict is seemingly unresolvable and even the best
diplomatic minds in the world are losing hope of peace ever being maintained in this region.
If you have any other thing you think we should have added to the narrative but didn’t,
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