What you need to know about Israel and Gaza

The current flare up of violence in Gaza is simply the most recent confrontation in a long history of battles between the Israelis and the Arab occupants of the Gaza Strip, a tiny area on the Mediterranean Sea between Israel and Egypt that is about the size of Montgomery, Ala. and is home to 1.8 million Palestinian Arabs. To fully understand the current situation, one must look back almost 50 years to 1967 and the Six Day War.

 

In antiquity, Gaza was ruled by a number of empires including the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Israelites, the Romans, and the Ottomans. The home of the ancient Philistines, it was also the location of Samson’s imprisonment in the Old Testament. After World War I, control passed from the Ottoman Empire to the British. After Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, an event referred to by Palestinians as “al Nakba” (the catastrophe), Gaza was occupied by Egypt even though the United Nations partition plan for Palestine had set aside the area to be an Arab state. Gaza was ostensibly governed by the All Palestine government during this time until 1959 when Egyptian President Nasser assumed overt control.

 

Read the full article on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

 

flickr.com/photos/farshadebrahimi