Gaza
Gaza is in the news this summer, which as far as Jewish history is concerned, is actually rather unusual. It’s not really been a very important place in the history of the Jews, though it’s true that in the history of the state of Israel, it has distinguished itself as being a mess.
But there you have it. When 9,000 Jewish people in a small strip of land have legal and military jurisdiction over 1.2 million Palestinians, it’s bound to create tension. And so, with pressure from the rest of the world and a majority of Israelis, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has chosen Gaza to be the first place to offer a territorial compromise with the Palestinians, in a greater effort to eventually bring peace.
Those are generally the facts as they get reported.
What do we really know about the history of the Gaza Strip?
Gaza is on the coastal plain.
It has, since antiquity, been a beautiful and functioning seaside area of land.
It was, for much of the Biblical period, the base of operations for Egypt to penetrate and attempt to control parts of Canaan.
Gaza has been possessed by Egyptians; Avites; Canaanites; and the Philistines. It was there that Samson brought down the Temple of Dagon–you can read about it in Judges 16, in your Bible.
Then the Assyrians had it for a while; and the Persians; and even Alexander the Great took it for a time. It eventually passed to Roman rule and finally Christian rule, when pagan temples were destroyed and Jews were allowed to live there, but it remained technically outside the halachic boundaries of the “Holy Land” as conceived by the Talmud.
So while there was always Jewish presence, there was never a necessity for Jewish rule in this area of the Land of Israel. During a period of several centuries–from the early middle ages to the Crusades, there were synagogues and wineries. In the 17th century a deluded figure who thought he was the messiah visited Gaza–his name was Sabbetai Zvi, and one of his principle followers was an equally complicated and delusional figure of history, known as Nathan of Gaza.
When Gaza moves into focus in contemporary history is in 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence, Palestinian refugees went to Gaza and the West Bank. From Gaza, the Palestinian national movement employed terror as a weapon against Israel on and off from 1948-1956. What a lot of people under 40 don’t know is that Israel went into Gaza to attempt to root out that terror in the Sinai Campaign of 1956 (Egypt let the terror fester, since they too were at war with Israel until 1979.)
In 1967, in the wake of the Six Day War between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel took Gaza, where it has remained since. And since that time, if you follow Israeli politics, you would have witnessed a 38 year old debate about the efficacy of that military decision. Meaning, how long should Israel hold it. Or, another way to look at it could be that while Gaza bears little significance to Jewish history, it bears military significance to Israeli history.
That means that from a military perspective, one can understand the desire or even need to conquer and occupy enemy territory when that enemy is out to destroy you. But it also means that, like military problems, there are military and political solutions. And painful as it has been, that is what the contemporary state of Israel is embarking on, for all the world to witness.
No political agenda here folks. Just an effort to dispassonately lay out some facts for your consumption. This is not really an area for rabbis to be expounding on Gaza’s inherent holiness for the Jews–though if you follow the Israeli press, former Chief Rabbis and a number of rabbinic authorities in the settler movement have turned this debate into a religious question over the rights of Jews in the Holy Land. Those issues are more relevant in certain towns and cities of the West Bank, where there is a more demonstrable connection to Jewish history. But in Gaza, we have a military and political solution working itself out, plain and simple. And in that matter, there is near unanimity in the military and political mainstream for this decision.
So as the weeks move ahead toward the August 15 pullout, read the stories and know the history. These are not easy times; and with Israel pulling back, the world will watch to see if the Palestinians can curb attacks on Jews in Israel proper. And after that brief history of the Gaza Strip, it may be most safe to say that only God knows what will happen next.
July 21st, 2005 at 11:44 pm
Martin Peretzwrites about Gaza in this week’s New Republic.
Among his comments include this: “Judea and Samaria–not Gaza, which was the land of the Philistines and, for Jewish consciousness, can bask only in Samson’s locks and David’s slingshot–are where early Jewish history was written. It is hard to imagine two former chief rabbis, one Ashkenazi, one Sephardi, instructing religious soldiers to disobey orders as a way to undermine the departure from Gaza, but the surrender of Gaza may loom for them as a terrible precedent in other places. Yet the call of spiritual figures upon men and women in the military to break discipline is a profoundly subversive act that severs the compact between the secular Zionist state and religious Zionism.”
I knew there was a reason I’ve been reading this magazine since I was sixteen.