The Gaza strip is that one piece of EGYPTIAN land that Israel didn't hand back under the Camp David agreement negotiated by Jimmy Carter in 1979. It was never part of Israel until the Six Day War, which Israel used to justify a shameless land grab in 1967. Ditto the West Bank (part of Jordan) and the Golan Heights (part of Syria). Given Israel's precarious position, giving herself defensible borders makes some kind of sense, but building enclaves in the occupied territories was asking for trouble. Had they pushed the Egyptian Palestinians back into Egypt, the Jordanian Palestinians back into Jordan and the Syrian Palestinians back into Syria, then declared all of that land they now hold a DMZ and prevented ANYONE from living there (like the 38th parallel in Korea), it may have been a workable solution. They didn't. History. Study it.
This post was edited by Slartibartfast at February 1, 2025 5:09 AM MST
It was part of the Tribe of Judah's inheritance in the Bible. So yes, it was part of Israel in the past.
Yes, I agree Israel is too nice to people who want them destroyed.
They won the land in a war. Wars change boundaries. That is how it works has for all of mankind's existence.
This post was edited by my2cents at February 1, 2025 1:44 PM MST
THAT Israel ceased to exist centuries ago, it was overrun by the Saracens while the Byzantine empire was busy collapsing. Judea had been no more than a political district under Constantinople, and Rome before that. Not an independent nation. The Jewish people have had self rule three times - firstly under the Judges and the Kings. The Kingdom of Israel split when the tribes of Joseph and Benjamin (the children of the wife Jacob Israel actually wanted to marry) decided to do their own thing - the Northern Kingdom was still known as Israel, the much larger and stronger Southern Kingdom was Judah, but the whole shebang was weak and unstable. Even before the split it was a pipsqueak, David moved in a power vacuum. Egypt had fallen, Assyria and Babylon had yet to rise - the fact that a wandering band of barbarians, the Philistines, were able to seriously trouble him underlines how weak he actually was. Splitting it left it weaker still, Assyria later swallowed the Northern Kingdom without so much as token resistance, then when Babylon conquered the Assyrian Empire they picked up Judah almost as an afterthought. This is when the Torah was actually codified, the priests during the exilic period saw their hold over the people slipping away. Quite a lot of stuff from the occupying powers crept in - the account of the Flood in Genesis was straight plagiarism from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Spell 125 from the Egyptian Book of the Dead pops up in Exodus etc. Tradition attributes it to Moses but none of it is even close to that old with the possible exception of the Song of Miriam. The Persian Empire restored the Jewish people to Judah but it was a vassal state under tribute. Cyrus was smart, by letting the people have their Temple back they gave him little trouble. Then Alexander conquered the Persians and upon his death all hell broke loose, Judah was part of that portion of the Alexandrian Empire claimed by his lieutenant Seleucid. The Seleucids were dumb, trying to impose their religion and when Seleucid V erected a statue of himself in the Temple grounds, the Maccabees had had enough and revolted. This was the second period of Jewish self rule, again existing in a power vacuum. The five Alexandrian kingdoms were wracked by internal divisions and petty border disputes, Rome had not yet come to full power although it was gathering strength. The Hasmoneans (Herods) surrendered to the Romans after a generation and the region now known as Judea was once again a vassal state, the Herods continuing as puppet kings under Rome. Again as little more than a morsel, Rome wanted access to Egypt and going through Judea was the easiest way given that Rome wasn't really a naval power. It was two thousand years before the Jewish people were to know self rule again and this time they had nothing to do with it - the Allies had created Transjordan after the First World War, carving it out of the Ottoman Empire as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Turkey was treated very shabbily by that treaty, nobody actually defeated them at home and their only belligerent action was closing the Dardanelles, denying the Russian Black Sea fleet access to the Mediterranean. It's doubtful whether the Tsar's ships would have had much impact in any case, the RN was by far the most powerful Navy on Earth without them. But while the Young Turks were busy performing genocide on the Armenians, they'd allowed the Arabs way too much autonomy and the British trounced them. They had so much internal trouble that they let the outlying territories fend for themselves. Transjordan was never going to work, the Jewish residents were hopelessly outnumbered and the Diaspora that had started during the Alexandrian period left them spread throughout the world. However, when Hitler started his pogroms on Germany's Jewish population in the 1930s, the rest of the world stood meekly by and let it happen, then in the 1940s they could do little about it as Hitler extended his push throughout Europe. After the Second World War, the Allies were guilted into doing what they should have done thirty years earlier and honoured the promise they'd made to Chaim Weizmann in 1916 in return for his invention - synthetic cordite. He'd asked for a homeland for his people. Europe's Jewish population moved there pretty much en masse, but the Palestinians who'd lived there for more than a millennium weren't thrilled by being displaced. And those three territories weren't part of the deal either. Neither was East Jerusalem.
This post was edited by Slartibartfast at February 1, 2025 6:50 PM MST
Gaza is a city in the Palestinian territory known as the Gaza Strip. Whether or not Palestine is a state depends on the country you live in or in some cases, your individual belief. There is a long and complicated history and I don't understand it enough to comment.
This post was edited by Jane S at January 30, 2025 2:39 AM MST
Of course. I wondered why you asked. I think someone is being shouty and emphasizing that the US is sending humanitarian aid to what they consider Very Bad People. Or maybe she thinks it's like USA.
Seems reasonable. There are 2M people in Gaza, let's say half of them are male. So that's $50 per man. If condoms cost a dollar each, the men can use one a week for almost a year. Seems like they were being conservative.
I don't know if this is the sort of source you would trust, but I've been looking at fact-checking sites and they come to the same conclusion as Reuters.
my2cents 