Gaza City

 

   Like any self-respecting city in the Middle East, Gaza has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. We can see one of those times of destruction right now. The city will be rebuilt. It's too important a location to be left in its current flattened state. The citizens of the city don't want to leave, but there's no food in the markets, the schools are closed, their neighbors are being killed by bombs, so they move away for now. In the past two years Gaza's population of almost 600,000 has been reduced by two thirds. I wonder at the 200,000 who remain. How do they get along?

   When Alexander the Great took the city in 332 BC after a siege, the inhabitants were either slaughtered or sold into slavery, so things have improved a little since the old days. What's happened in Gaza City now and also in the entire 140 square mile Gaza Strip and its two million people is part of the Palestinian Nabka or 'catastrophe' that's been going on since 1948 when the Palestinians lost the first war to the Israelis.

   Before 1918, Gaza had jogged along prosperously for hundreds of years as part of the Ottoman Empire. Britain and the Allies won WWI and carved up the Ottoman Empire and what is now Israel became Palestine. Jews around the world who had been without a homeland since Roman times began settling in Palestine. Tensions arose between the new settlers and the Palestinians who had been there almost forever. Both sides armed themselves and created paramilitary units which were a headache to the British who thought they were running the place.

   There were riots in the 1920s and in the 1930s an Arab Revolt in which Palestinians demanded an end to Jewish immigration and the creation of an independent Arab state. After more rioting Britian sent in additional troops. The Jews responded with strikes and acts of terrorism against British targets. After WWII, Britain wanted out of Palestine. The UN proposed a two state solution which the Arabs rejected. The day after all British forces left in May, 1948, the Jews declared the establishment of the State of Israel.

   In the months before the British left, the Jews had forced thousands of Palestinians out of the area Israel considered theirs. People who resisted expulsion were massacred. The Arab states surrounding Israel attacked Israel planning to destroy Israel and allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. Israel survived the attack. They kept their own land and took 60% of the land proposed by the UN for a Palestinian state. A quarter million Palestinians fled to Jordan during the war. They or their descendants are still there. Egypt took the Gaza Strip and Jordan took the West Bank and the east half of Jerusalem. In the wars that followed, Israel took the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and all of Jerusalem. The dream of peace in the Middle East remains a nightmare.

   I read a book many years ago called The Indestructible Jews. It was a history of the ups and downs of the Jewish people. The Jews see themselves as God's chosen people descended from Abraham who fathered Isaac when he and Sarah were old. God promised Abraham he would be father of a nation as numerous as the stars. Before Isaac, Sarah had been barren. She felt sorry for Abraham because he had no son so she sent her maid Hagar to him. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. After Sarah had Isaac, Ishmael became redundant in Sarah’s eyes. Abraham felt bad when he kicked Hagar and Ishmael out, but orders were orders. When Hagar and Ishmael were on the verge of death in the desert, an angel rescued them and told Hagar that God would make a great nation out of Ishmael. "That would be us," say the Arabs. And there you have the whole catastrophe in a nutshell.

There may be some bumps in the road, but God says you’ll be fine.