The New Map of Gaza is Being Fashioned Out of Blood and Fire

The New Map of Gaza is Being Fashioned Out of Blood and Fire

By Geoffrey Aronson

When I first walked the dusty thoroughfares of the Jabaliya refugee camp in 1977, the tin and cinder block residences fit neatly into the checkerboard of unpaved avenues running the length and width of what was even then Gaza’s most populous refugee camp.

After the murder in 1971 of two of Israeli children, the Gaza highway where the attack took place was closed for a month and the homes of scores of families in Jabaliya were flattened to enable heavy military vehicles to patrol the camp (hence the checkerboard).

This plan was the handiwork of then General Ariel Sharon. As commander of the southern front, Sharon authored the campaign to bulldoze the broad roads throughout the 1.4-square-kilometer camp as the signature feature of Israel’s Sisyphean effort to defeat a simmering revolt against Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Long before Hamas ruled Gaza, Palestinians in Jabaliya and elsewhere in the Strip rebelled and resisted, murdered Israelis and were killed in turn.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s a heavy military hand proceeded in tandem with the improbable creation of Israeli settlements throughout the Strip, established as an integral part of Israel’s intention to prevent the creation of a territorially unified Palestinian proto-state.

For a while the policy appeared to be working. These were the days of what was known in the West as Israel’s “benevolent occupation.” Almost 10,000 Israeli settlers made Gaza their improbable, and unsustainable home. Israelis from Tel Aviv went on Saturday outings to Gaza, enjoying the fish restaurants on the seashore and fixing their cars at a discount.

Palestinians in their tens of thousands worked in Israel, not infrequently in locales near their ancestral homes in Israel. Many broke the law by staying in Israel overnight, and thereby saving the expensive and time-consuming commute.

In mid-1982 one could drive unobstructed into Gaza from Israel. Then Minister of Security Sharon had recently removed the two bored soldiers -- lounging on white plastic chairs -- who had hitherto been deployed to secure the border.

These were indeed “the golden years of occupation” – the words are those of a wistful Ramonda Tawil, the Palestinian writer, lamenting the passing of an era that, for all of its numerous shortcomings, enjoyed many advantages over what was to come.

In December 1987, an accident in Jabaliya between an IDF truck and a civilian vehicle resulted in the deaths of four Palestinians, three of whom were from Jabaliya. Their deaths sparked the explosion that became known as the First Intifada, putting a permanent end to this blind idyll.

Yitzhak Rabin waged a winning campaign for prime minister in 1992, promising to “get Gaza out of Tel Aviv.” Israelis were tired of Gaza. They just wanted it to disappear.

Yet it would be another 15 bloody years before Ariel Sharon decided to take Israel out of the tiny enclave hugging the Mediterranean.

Beginning with the first Gulf War in 1990 and continuing during the Oslo years and the appearance of Yasser Arafat and the PLO in Gaza after 1993, Gaza’s borders were hardened, the crossing at Erez was militarized, and Palestinians were denied routine and seamless access to jobs and family in Israel and the West Bank. For Israelis there were no more outings to Gaza.

Sharon’s momentous decision to retreat from Gaza, and to permanently evacuate Israel’s 8,000 settlers, marked Israel’s recognition of the failure of the security and settlement paradigm that Sharon himself had inaugurated more than two decades earlier.

Israel’s foreign ministry however, refused to agree that Sharon’s retreat signaled the end of Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Israel still maintained “effective control” over the Strip, as its subsequent effort to keep Gaza on a “diet” of draconian restrictions on trade and employment in Israel– the description belongs to Sharon advisor Dov Weisglas – confirmed.

Sharon intended for Egypt to be the strategic loser of Israel’s decision to close Israel’s gates to Gaza. As it was explained at the time; “The toothpaste has to be squeezed out somewhere – if not Erez (Israel) then Rafah (Egypt).”

Since then Egypt has defied Israeli efforts to push Gaza in Egypt’s direction.

Today Cairo finds itself in the eye of this storm once again. In the many confrontations between Israel and Hamas during this millennium, Cairo has made every effort to minimize conflict – by exchanging prisoners, arranging ceasefires, and moderating an Israeli-imposed “diet” -- not out of love for either antagonist but in order to keep the contagion that is Gaza at bay. Today it fights mightily –after all the viability of the Sisi regime hangs in the balance – to prevent another “Nakba” and the removal of Gaza’s refugees to Egypt.

Sharon’s decision in 2005 also marked the countdown to the retreat of the PLO from Gaza and the empowerment of Hamas as the de facto ruler of the Strip and its 2 million plus residents.

Israel accommodated Hamas’ rule and in a strategic sense profited by it. Gaza was kept on the diet that continues almost two decades after Sharon passed from the scene, and, as he intended, the battles between the PLO and Hamas ensure the impossibility of a unified Palestinian diplomatic effort to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

This model was inherently unstable. Like all such understandings, it functioned until it broke, as it did in spectacular fashion on October 7.

The massacres perpetrated by Hamas on that day irrevocably broke this paradigm. In its place, a new era is being shaped, not at the negotiating table but in the funerals held by the bereaved on both sides of this yawning divide.

Out of the fire and rubble, the tears and the bullets, a new map is being fashioned.

"Today there is a northern Gaza and a southern Gaza," declared an Israeli spokesperson. Hamas "understands the implications" of the move.

Politicians and diplomats would do well to remember that everything that has been tried to pacify the refugees in Gaza over the last two generations, indeed, since the creation of Israel, has failed. We have been reminded yet again of the terrible cost of ruling over Palestinians who will never be reconciled to history’s verdict.

Geoffrey Aronson writes widely about Middle East affairs and is formerly a political advisor to the EUPOLCOPPS (EU Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support) mission in Ramallah.

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