Foundations of a geopolitical entity - the Gaza Strip 1947–1950

Abstract

The Gaza Strip is a territory of 365 square kilometres located in the southern coastal plain of Palestine. Distinguished by a long, narrow spatial form and named after its main metropolis, the city of Gaza, it forms a political entity whose formal status has not been determined since its formation in the 1948 War. The aim of this article is to explore the circumstances in which the Gaza Strip was formed as an allegedly provisional geopolitical entity that has survived for over 70 years. It will concentrate on the formative period between the allocation of British Mandate Palestine’s southern coastal strip to a prospective Arab state by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in September 1947 and the signing in February 1950 of the Modus Vivendi agreement between Egypt and Israel that had finally delineated an armistice line that forms Gaza Strip’s boundary with Israel until recently.

Keywords:

• Gaza Strip
• Israel
• Palestine
• 1948 War
• Egypt

As the result of war, new and sometimes unstable geopolitical spaces may emerge in the interstices of political territorialities.¹ Such is the Gaza Strip, a territory of 365 square kilometres located in the southern coastal plain of Palestine, between Egypt and Israel. Distinguished by a long, narrow spatial form and named after its main metropolis, the city of Gaza, it forms a political entity whose formal status has not been determined since its formation in the 1948 War. Its boundary, save for a short segment separating it from Egypt, was set as a military line demarcated in the framework of an armistice agreement that ended the fighting in the Israeli-Egyptian front in that war.²

Throughout Palestine’s long history, the area included in the bounds of the Gaza Strip was never considered a distinct region or a separate geopolitical entity. Its human geography, which had developed dynamically since the mid-nineteenth century under Ottoman and British Mandate regimes, was drastically transformed by the 1948 wartime process. The population of the Gaza Strip more than tripled: tens of thousands of refugees crowded into the area that became subject to an Egyptian military government and who were accommodated in dilapidated refugee camp huts, dependent on international relief.

This article explores the circumstances in which the Gaza Strip was formed as an allegedly provisional geopolitical entity that has survived for over seventy years. The article concentrates on the formative period between the allocation of Palestine’s southern coastal strip to a prospective Arab state by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in September 1947 and the signing in February 1950 of the Modus Vivendi agreement between Egypt and Israel that finally delineated the armistice line that forms the boundary of the Gaza Strip with Israel. The boundary between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, which is based on a formal international boundary demarcated in 1906 and which separated Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, is not discussed in this article.³

Political boundaries and formal territorialities

Political boundaries are formal demarcation lines that separate spatial entities and define their territorial limits. Political boundaries are not always aligned with ’soft’ social and cultural boundaries, the blurry volatile lines that separate human social and cultural groups and, in most cases, are cognitive and spatially invisible.⁴ In the international context, political borders are formed as ’hard’ boundaries that are clearly marked on maps and, in many cases where border crossings are monitored by state institutions, also have a conspicuous spatial presence. In some cases, such as in the case of the Republic of Turkey’s formal southeastern boundary in the early 1920s, formal boundaries originate in provisional armistice lines.

In the course of the twentieth century, the world has become increasingly divided into sovereign states separated by formal boundaries. Some of these states have a federal structure such as the United States of America or India, which are unions of partially self-governing entities, while others, such as Spain, include autonomous regions within their territory. Political-administrative sub-state territorial units are also defined by formal boundaries that rarely have spatial presence and whose crossing is not controlled. Several states form part of confederative supranational entities such as the European Union, whose borders include the sovereign territories of its members and in which national boundary crossing is subject to little or no formal procedures.⁵ The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were characterised by an unprecedented rise in international trade, tourist flows, and movements of foreign labour. Consequently, many ’hard’ international boundaries have ’softened’, becoming more easily passable and less spatially prominent.⁶

The Gaza Strip seems exceptional in the geopolitical context of the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It forms a political entity that is not a sovereign state, nor part of a federative or confederative union, nor an autonomous region within a state. The 1948 War, the first Arab–Israeli war, gave rise to the Gaza Strip yet its permanent formal status has never been settled. It has been under Egyptian military rule (1948–1956, 1957–1967) and under Israeli military rule (1956–1957, 1967–2005), was part of the territory ruled by the Palestinian Authority (2005–2007), and since 2007, constitutes a political entity ruled by Hamas, a radical Muslim Palestinian party. Despite its indefinite political status, since 1948 the Gaza Strip has had hard clear-cut boundaries separating it from Israel and Egypt, and these have further ’hardened’ along the years to become the formidable barriers they are today.⁷

The beginning: drawing a partition line

The formation of the Gaza Strip originates in the British government decision from 14 February 1947 to terminate its Mandate for Palestine and refer the matter of the future of Palestine to the United Nations. On 15 May 1947, the United Nation General Assembly established The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to investigate the cause of the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Zionist Jews in Palestine, and if possible, devise a solution.⁸

UNSCOP submitted a report to the UN General Assembly on 3 September 1947 that included two plans regarding the future of Palestine: a partition between an Arab and a Jewish state, which was recommended by the majority of the committee’s members; and a federal state, recommended by the minority. On 23 September 1947, the General Assembly established the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question to assess UNSCOP’s majority and minority plans. The Ad-Hoc Committee approved the majority plan but made a number of changes to the boundaries of the proposed partition plan, which was approved by a vote in the General Assembly on 29 November 1947. The Palestine Partition Plan also called for the formation of an economic union between the prospective states, that is, an economic confederation with a passable political boundary to afford cooperation (see Map 1).⁹

Map 1. Map of UN Partition Plan for Palestine, adopted 29 Nov 1947, with boundary of previous UNSCOP partition plan added in green; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/UN_Palestine_Partition_Versions_1947.jpg (retrieved 23 January 2023).

The original partition plan allocated the southern coastal plain, extending from the Rafah crossing of the border with Egypt in the south to the Arab village of Isdud¹⁰ in the north, to the prospective Arab state. The boundary line was drawn approximately in parallel to that of the former British Mandate Gaza sub-district. The Ad-Hoc Committee’s modifications straightened the boundary line, reducing the territorial extent of the southern coastal plain allocated to the Arab state, and rendering it into the form of a strip. Concurrently, the Committee added to the Arab state a strip of land extending southward from Rafah to Auja al-Hafir.¹¹

The Polish diplomat Ksawery Pruszynski, a member of the Ad-Hoc Committee, stated that the southern coastal plain was allocated to the Arab state on economic grounds, to give the Palestinian Arabs an opportunity to develop it in the same manner Zionist Jews developed Tel Aviv and its surroundings in the central coastal plain.¹² Yet it seems that the allocation of the southern coastal plain and its extension southward was also, if not primarily, based on strategic grounds. American and British officials assumed that a socialist-led Jewish State might become a bridgehead for Soviet involvement in the Middle East, while Arab states were ruled by pro-Western conservative kings and governments. Therefore, they sought to secure Arab control of Rafah and Auja al-Hafir, the border crossings located on both arteries leading from Palestine to the highly strategic Suez Canal Zone.¹³

Wartime and the Egyptian invasion of Palestine

Fighting between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs started in early December 1947. The end of the British Mandate on 15 May 1948 was followed by an invasion of Palestine by the regular armies of several Arab states, designed to obliterate the newly born State of Israel.¹⁴ The Egyptian army invaded from the Sinai Peninsula in two columns. The main force, which included an infantry brigade with elements of armour and artillery, advanced through the Rafah border crossing and headed north along Palestine’s coastal artery. A secondary force advanced through Auja al-Hafir via Beersheba, and northeast to Mount Hebron.¹⁵

The main force was held up for five days by the defenders of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, which was located on a hill controlling the coastal artery.¹⁶ After capturing the Kibbutz on 26 May, the Egyptian force advanced further north through the Arab town and main road junction of al-Majdal, and on 29 May reached Isdud, its north-most territorial achievement, located about twenty miles south of Tel Aviv. A detachment from the main Egyptian force advanced eastward from al-Majdal to the western slopes of Arab-dominated Mount Hebron, laying siege to the twenty-four Jewish agricultural settlements located in the northern and western Negev. After capturing the southern coastal strip allocated to the prospective Arab state, Egypt established a military government over all areas of southern Palestine.¹⁷

The Israeli force facing the Egyptian invasion included two infantry brigades. One was deployed along the northern segment of the Egyptian-controlled coastal plain, down to the outskirts of al-Majdal, and eastward to al-Faluja while the second defended the Jewish settlements of the besieged Negev. Both brigades were deployed along the frontlines, unable to effectively counter-attack with their insufficient reserves. Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence David Ben Gurion and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) General Staff assigned low priority to the south, preferring to secure Jerusalem and the main centres of Jewish population and economic activity in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and their surroundings.¹⁸ From June to October, Israeli and Egyptian forces fought several fierce battles, yet neither side managed to significantly improve its position.¹⁹

Israeli priorities changed following the victories and territorial gains achieved in the northern and central sectors of Palestine by the IDF in the battles of July 1948.²⁰ In the diplomatic arena, in June the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations Mediator in Palestine appointed by the UN General Assembly in May 1948, recommended an amendment to the borders of the partition plan by removing the Negev from the territory of the Jewish State. His plan met with stiff Israeli resistance as Ben Gurion considered the sparsely populated Negev essential for Israel’s future development. To rebuff what became known as the Bernadotte Plan, the Israeli government decided to initiate an offensive in the south.²¹

In August 1948, the Israeli General Staff initiated a reorganisation and redeployment of the IDF ground forces. The area controlled by Israel was divided among four fronts: north, centre, Jerusalem, and south. General Yigal Allon, the IDF’s most experienced field commander, was appointed the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the South Front. By the end of the summer of 1948, the Egyptians had also increased their force and used local irregular forces mainly to secure their hold of the western slopes of Mount Hebron.²²

From October 1948 to January 1949: the making of the Gaza Strip

The South Front’s plan for the offensive code-named Operation Yoav was designed to defeat and drive the Egyptian Expeditionary Force beyond the 1906 international boundary. Allon presented his three-stage operative plan to Ben Gurion and the IDF General Staff on 5 October 1948: the first stage was an attack on al-Faluja, a point that controlled a junction leading south to Beersheba and the besieged Jewish settlements of the Negev and east to Hebron; the second stage was intended to defeat the Egyptian brigade deployed along the coastal plain between Isdud and al-Majdal and capture the town of al-Majdal, the seat of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force headquarters and its main logistic centre. The third stage was the conquest of Gaza and its environs, to complete the Egyptian defeat and force its retreat beyond the international boundary.²³ Acknowledging the Israeli preparations for an offensive, the GOC of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force General Ahmad Ali al-Mwawi requested permission to withdraw southward to a more reasonable defence line, but his request was denied by the Army Headquarters at Cairo.²⁴

Operation Yoav was launched in the evening of 15 October 1948. Achieving the aim of the first stage, breaking the siege on the Negev, took five days of bitter fighting. In view of the heavy casualties suffered by Israeli forces and the UN Security Council’s demands for a ceasefire, the execution of the second and third phases of the plan were no longer feasible. Instead, a combined Israeli task force stormed Beersheba on the morning of 21 October, taking by surprise the Egyptian battalion holding the town. The fall of Beersheba was a strategic blow to the Egyptians as it cut off the main road leading from Egypt to the mountains of Hebron and gave the Israelis a secure base to attack Rafah to the west or Auja al-Hafir to the southwest.²⁵

A ceasefire declared by the UN Security Council went into effect in the afternoon of 22 October. At that time, General Al-Mwawi decided to shorten his lines by withdrawing the force deployed in the coastal plain southward to the area that is approximately the current Gaza Strip. Subsequently, Israeli forces advanced southward and on 4 November entered al-Majdal unopposed.²⁶ At the same time, other Israeli forces cleansed the hilly terrain east of al-Faluja of irregulars, laying siege to the eastern flank of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in what became known as the al-Faluja Pocket.²⁷

Although Israeli achievements were considerable, Operation Yoav’s primary aim had not been achieved. The Egyptian Expedition Force was not expelled beyond the international boundary.²⁸ The Gaza-Rafah area was now held by two Egyptian infantry brigades, while a third was redeployed along the road leading from Beersheba to the Sinai Peninsula, between Auja al-Hafir and Bir ’Asluj. The Egyptian command, which anticipated further Israeli offensives, initiated a significant strengthening of fortifications using construction materials left behind by the British in Rafah’s military bases.²⁹ The Egyptians also attempted to expand their lines in the sparsely held western Negev towards Beersheba, but were repelled in early December 1948.³⁰

Ben Gurion and the IDF General Staff estimated that the Egyptian Expeditionary Force still constituted a military threat to Israel’s strategic aim of controlling the entire Negev down to the Gulf of Aqaba. Therefore, it was decided to initiate a second offensive to drive the Egyptians beyond the international boundary. The South Front was reinforced to four infantry brigades while a fifth was deployed around the al-Faluja Pocket. General Allon assumed that a frontal assault against the Gaza-Rafah sector would be met with stiff resistance, so he planned to first attack the southern flank of the Egyptian front, between Auja al-Hafir and Bir ’Asluj. The main assault was to be preceded by a series of feint attacks along the Gaza-Rafah sector, to distract Egyptian attention from the main Israeli thrust.³¹

The main assault caught the Egyptians by surprise and, after two days of fierce fighting, Auja al-Hafir was in Israeli hands on 27 December 1948. The southern gate to the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal Zone had been breached. Ben Gurion and the IDF General Staff expected Allon to turn northwards along the Auja al-Hafir – Rafah road to assault the strategic junction of Rafah and force the Egyptian Expeditionary Force either to surrender or withdraw westward beyond the international boundary.³² Anticipating the fall of Gaza and its environs, Ben Gurion directed General Elimelech Avner, head of the IDF Military Government Command, to nominate a military governor for the city and surrounding area.³³

Allon’s operational conception was different and on 28 December he directed his assault westward into Sinai and took the strategic junction of Abu-Ageila the next day. From there, he ordered an armoured column to turn to the northwest, occupy the junction of Al-Arish, block the road leading from Rafah to Egypt and force the surrender of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Other small Israeli taskforces were ordered to raid Egyptian rear bases located further west and southwest in the centre of the Sinai Peninsula to spread havoc and confusion.³⁴ Allon led the IDF General Staff to believe that his westward assault was only a raid. Once General Yigael Yadin, IDF Head of Operations, discovered that he had been misled, he ordered Allon on 29 December to stop all operations in Sinai.³⁵

Although Allon convinced Yadin to permit him to proceed with the assault in the Sinai, on the very same day the UN Security Council ordered a ceasefire, demanding all sides to retreat to original lines. Both Egyptian and Israeli governments rejected the demand. However, due to the strategic threat to the Suez Canal Zone created by the Israeli advance into Sinai, the British government, with the support of the US President Harry S. Truman, presented an ultimatum to the Israeli government, threatening to intervene directly in the fighting if Israeli forces remained on Egyptian soil. Succumbing to the joint Anglo-American pressure, Ben Gurion ordered a withdrawal from Sinai, which was completed on 2 January 1949.³⁶

To accomplish Operation Chorev’s original operational objective, the South Front launched Phase B on 3 January, attacking from Auja al-Hafir along the road leading to Rafah, to capture the strategic junction. The surprise element was lost, the Egyptian command was prepared, and the attack by the worn-down Israeli forces faltered. Having suffered heavy casualties, both sides accepted a ceasefire that was declared by the UN Security Council on 7 January 1949, leaving the Gaza–Rafah sector in Egyptian hands.³⁷ Despite the operative failure, Ben Gurion considered Operation Chorev a strategic victory: the Egyptian Expedition Force’s southern flank had been defeated and driven out of the Negev, and the road leading to the Gulf of Aqaba lay open before the Israelis. As for the area to become the Gaza Strip, Ben Gurion believed that leaving it in Egyptian hands was a reasonable price for control of the Negev. Moreover, he assumed that even if Israel had managed to occupy Gaza, the Americans and the British would not have allowed Israel to remain in control there or annex it.³⁸

Post-war delineation of the Gaza Strip

In the early months of 1949 fighting gradually subsided and both Israel and the Arab States turned to political manoeuvring. As Neil Caplan notes, negotiations were conducted in two trajectories: the Rhodes trajectory, which focused on a series of armistice agreements, and the Lausanne trajectory, which was intended to achieve a permanent peace agreement and ended in failure.³⁹

The armistice negotiations between Egypt and Israel began on 12 January 1949 on the island of Rhodes, under UN supervision, and an agreement was signed on 24 February 1949 following six weeks of protracted deliberations. The Israeli demand for the total withdrawal of all Egyptian forces beyond the international boundary was not fully accepted. The Egyptians maintained control of the area that became known as the Gaza Strip, while Auja al-Hafir and its environs became a demilitarised zone. The Egyptians withdrew from al-Faluja in March and in May from Mount Hebron which was left in the hands of King Abdullah of Transjordan. Israel’s strategic gain was solidified in March 1949, with the unopposed occupation of the central and southern Negev, down to the Gulf of Aqaba in Operation Uvda (Hebrew for ’fact’).⁴⁰

According to article 10 of the armistice agreement, its execution was to be supervised by ’…a Mixed Armistice Commission (MAC) composed of seven members, of whom each Party to this Agreement shall designate three, and whose Chairman shall be the United Nations Chief of Staff of the Truce Supervision Organisation or a senior officer from the observer personnel of that Organisation designated by him…’.⁴¹ The MAC afforded Israeli and Egyptian delegates an opportunity to deliberate directly on local affairs in the future.

The Lausanne trajectory had already been initiated upon the adoption by the UN Assembly of Resolution 194 on 11 December 1948. Paragraph 5 of the Resolution recommended the constitution of a Conciliation Commission for Palestine (known as the PCC) ’…to seek agreement by negotiations conducted either with the Conciliation Commission or directly [between Israel and the Arab States], with a view to the final settlement of all questions outstanding between them’.⁴² The PCC, whose three members were an American chairman and French and Turkish delegates, convened the Lausanne Conference from 27 April to 12 September 1949 to discuss the matters in dispute, including territorial questions and the establishment of recognised international boundaries.⁴³

Already in April 1948, while deliberating involvement in the war, the Egyptian government had officially declared that it had no interest in the annexation of any part of Palestine.⁴⁴ Nevertheless, the Egyptians resented King Abdullah’s intentions to annex parts of Palestine to his kingdom. On 22 September 1948, Egypt established the Government of All-Palestine, whose temporary seat was in Gaza City, also with the intent of curbing King Abdullah’s territorial ambitions. Following the blow they suffered in the battles of October, the Egyptians relocated the ministers of the newly formed government to Cairo, which rendered irrelevant the potential role of the Government of All-Palestine as the manifestation and symbol of Palestinian sovereignty.⁴⁵ Unofficial secret talks between Israeli and Egyptian emissaries in late September and early October 1948 revealed that the Egyptians had apparently changed their territorial policy and intended to annex Gaza and its environs along with other parts of southern Palestine to prevent their seizure by King Abdullah.⁴⁶ At the opening of the Lausanne Conference, Egypt officially demanded that Israel relinquish the area south of the al-Majdal–Dead Sea line that included the Negev and the Gaza Strip to Egyptian control.⁴⁷

The British, King Abdullah’s political patron, however, had a strategic-imperialist interest in preserving Arab, but not Egyptian, control over that area. It was their intention to form a contiguous Iraqi-Jordanian territory extending from Gaza in the west to Basra in the east, to form a defensive territorial shield against an anticipated Soviet invasion and to secure the oil-producing area of the Persian Gulf and the terrestrial gateways to the Suez Canal Zone. According to this plan, Gaza was to remain in the hands of King Abdullah and would also constitute his kingdom’s outlet to the Mediterranean. When the Israeli seizure of the Negev impeded Great Britain’s strategic aims, the British government (with American backing) put pressure to bear to achieve Israel’s total or partial withdrawal from the Negev in the prospective peace agreement.⁴⁸

Following the failure in Rhodes, Israel endeavoured to achieve an Egyptian withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the Lausanne trajectory, but resisted any attempt to redistribute its holding of the Negev in favour of either Jordan or Egypt. On 18 April 1949, Ben Gurion met with Mark Ethridge, the American chairman of the PCC and proposed to annex the Gaza Strip to Israel, including both original and refugee populations. The total number of residents of the Gaza Strip was estimated at about 200,000 at the time, including about 120,000 refugees, all of whom would be resettled in Israeli territory. This was also to represent Israel’s efforts in the resettlement and rehabilitation of the Palestinian refugees in the framework of a peace agreement. Ben Gurion’s proposal was flatly rejected by all Arab delegates to Lausanne, although the Egyptian ambassador to Washington stated that his government might agree if the refugees were allowed to return to their original homes, a demand that Israel rejected.⁴⁹

As for the transfer of the Gaza Strip from Egypt to Jordan, the Israeli government considered it the least bad option. Ben Gurion initially dismissed a Jordanian option, as he was concerned that this was part of a British scheme to resume political dominance in the area of their former Palestine Mandate. Yet, after secret peace talks with King Abdullah’s emissaries recommenced in November 1948, he seemed to change his mind and preferred it over leaving Gaza in the hands of Egypt, the strongest of Israel’s Arab enemies.⁵⁰

The future of the Gaza Strip was deliberated in consultation meetings that took place in the Israeli Foreign Ministry before the opening of the Lausanne Conference. At that time, the senior officials and military officers who participated in these meetings were unaware of Ben Gurion’s proposal to annex the Gaza Strip. Assuming that Egypt, whose territorial interest lay in the Negev, had no real interest in either annexing or ruling the Gaza Strip, the participants discussed several options regarding its future: annexation to Israel with or without its refugee population; the resettlement of refugees, preferably outside Israel; and establishing the Gaza Strip as a joint Israeli-Egyptian protectorate. The Jordanian option was also discussed but most participants rejected the idea, assuming King Abdullah would demand a sovereign land corridor to Gaza that would traverse Israeli territory and effectively cut it into two.⁵¹

The main advocate of the Jordanian option was Eliyahu Sasson, head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Department and a leading expert of Arab Affairs. Reuven Shiloah, a close adviser to Ben Gurion and also a leading expert in Arab Affairs who established and headed the Mossad in the early 1950s, was opposed to the transfer of the Gaza Strip to Jordanian control and preferred the establishment of a joint protectorate with Egypt or even continued Egyptian military rule.⁵²

Both opinions were presented to Ben Gurion and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett in a meeting on 22 April 1949. The Israeli Prime Minister wished to defer the issue of the Gaza Strip’s future, stating that he considered it a low priority that could be further deliberated in the future. Shiloah disagreed, assuming that both Egyptians and Jordanians would raise the matter of Gaza in the first session of the conference. Sasson also disagreed with Ben Gurion and expressed his concern about a possible British-mediated agreement between Egypt and Jordan to transfer of the Gaza Strip to Jordan and present Israel with a fait accompli. At that point, Ben Gurion terminated the discussion by disclosing his proposal to annex the Gaza Strip along with its original and refugee populations.⁵³

On 3 May 1949, the Israeli government approved Ben Gurion’s plan to annex the Gaza Strip. Sharett, who opposed the plan on demographic grounds, was the only minister to vote against it, and was also against the option of a joint protectorate with Egypt that would require the resettlement in Israel of a substantial number of refugees from the Gaza Strip. He also objected to the transfer of the Gaza Strip to King Abdullah but was prepared to consider this option in return for Jordanian-held territory along the western shores of the Dead Sea.⁵⁴

Sharett, however, became willing to reconsider the annexation option following a peace treaty offered by the self-proclaimed Syrian President, General Husni Al-Za’im who assumed power following a coup d’état on 30 March 1949. Al-Za’im proposed to resettle 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria in exchange for setting the Israeli-Syrian international boundary in the middle of Lake Hula and the Sea of Galilee. Ben Gurion and Sharett initially suspected Al-Za’im’s motives, but the goodwill he had shown in promoting the Syrian-Israeli armistice agreement that was signed on 20 July 1949 made them reassess his plan in the light of the opportunity to resettle the refugees from the Gaza Strip in Syria. Less than one month later, on 14 August 1949, Al-Za’im was ousted and executed and his peace initiative died with him.⁵⁵

Despite American support, the Israeli plan to annex the Gaza Strip was adamantly rejected by the Arab governments. In mid-August, Ben Gurion also seemed to rethink Israel’s annexation proposal when he received new data that estimated the total number of Gaza Strip residents at 300,000 rather than 200,000.⁵⁶ In any event, as a result of the stalemate in the negotiations, the Lausanne Conference ended in September 1949 without an agreement.⁵⁷

Following the failure of the Lausanne Conference, the PCC renewed its efforts to promote a peace agreement by prioritising the resolution of the refugee problem or at least securing an improvement in the refugees’ economic and social situation. Towards this end, the PCC established the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East, which became known the Clapp Committee, named after its chairman, the American settlement expert Robert Clapp.⁵⁸

In this framework of prioritising the resolution of the refugee problem, the PCC considered an Egyptian demand that Israel would permit the repatriation of refugees and allow them to cultivate their farmsteads located north and east of the Gaza Strip.⁵⁹ At the same time the Egyptian government used the MAC to deliver to Israel a draft of a modus vivendi agreement to settle the future of the no-man’s land that was defined in the armistice agreement, separating Egyptian and Israeli lines along the Gaza Strip. Israel refused to consider the repatriation of Palestinian refugees but accepted the proposal to settle the matter of the no-man’s land.⁶⁰

The Modus Vivendi agreement between Israel and Egypt was signed on 26 February 1950. The no-man’s land sector in the northern section of the Gaza Strip was divided between Israel, which received the northern half that included the villages of Deir Suneid and Dimra, whose remaining few residents were transferred to the Gaza Strip, while the Egyptians received the southern half, which included the lands and built-up areas of the villages Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya. In the south, the line was re-demarcated to include cultivated lands of the villages of Abasan and Khirbat Ikza’a within the limits of the Gaza Strip, along with some hills that controlled the Rafah–Gaza highway.⁶¹ To render this paper boundary a material spatial presence, the Israelis ploughed a furrow along the armistice line, which was since known as the Furrow Line (Kav Hatelem), as well as a parallel patrol road that encircled the Gaza Strip from the Israeli side.⁶²

Conclusion

The area known today as the Gaza Strip was allocated in the 1947 UN Partition Plan to a prospective Arab state and emerged as a spatial entity during the battles of the 1948 War. Its bounds were based on the ceasefire line that ended the fighting in January 1949, were formally defined in negotiations that led to the armistice agreement signed in February 1949, and were finalised in February 1950 by the Mixed Egyptian-Israeli Armistice Commission. The failure of further diplomatic efforts to end the Arab–Israeli conflict turned what was intended to be a temporary armistice line into a de-facto boundary, and the Gaza Strip into a distinct geopolitical entity. As the old Russian proverb says, ’Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.’

The prolonged situation of transience created instability along the armistice line. In the first half of the 1950s, infiltration and sporadic fighting turned into a border war that culminated in the 1956 Suez War and Israel’s temporary occupation of the Gaza Strip. The state of relative nonviolence that prevailed after Israel’s retreat from the Gaza Strip and its return to Egyptian military rule in March 1957 ended in the 1967 War and the second Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Israel failed in its attempts to annex at least part of the area through economic measures and Jewish settlement. Israel’s post-1967 de-facto annexation policy ’softened’ the ’hard’ boundary, creating permeability by facilitating a bilateral flow of people – Jewish settlers and Palestinian labourers – and goods. This permeability was gradually reduced as Israel ’hardened’ the former armistice line following the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising in 1987, and increasingly so following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the formation of the Palestinian Authority.⁶³ At the same, this armistice line boundary became increasingly recognised by the international community as the future international boundary between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

Following the events of the second Palestinian uprising, in 2005 Israel decided on unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and evacuated all of its soldiers and settlers from its bounds.⁶⁴ Although the Gaza Strip has been formally part of the Palestinian Authority since 2007, it is currently controlled by a government of the radical Palestinian Islamic party of Hamas and constitutes a de facto separate entity. Open hostility between Hamas and Israel results in the outbreak of repeated rounds of fighting along the former armistice line, and the separating line was further hardened by a formidable border barrier built by Israel. Tense relations between the Hamas government and Egypt resulted in the construction of an Egyptian barrier along the 1906 international boundary.⁶⁵ The hardening of the Gaza Strip’s borders stands in sharp contrast to the increasing softening of boundaries in many places around the world, where borders are crossed with little or no formal procedures.

The destitution and frustration of its population, locked in one of the world’s most densely populated areas, along with unsettled political status, have turned the Gaza Strip into a hub of radical Palestinian political activity and an armed struggle against Israel, which neither the Egyptian or Israeli military governments, nor a relatively moderate Palestinian Authority, have managed to restrain. Trapped in the interstices of political territorialities, the Gaza Strip remains a focal point of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 C. Dahlman and Gearóid Ó Tuathail, ’Bosnia’s Third Space? Nationalist Separatism and International Supervision in Bosnia’s Brčko District’, Geopolitics, Vol. 11, (2006), pp.651-52.

2 S. Arieli, The Truman Institute Atlas of the Jewish–Arab Conflict (Jerusalem: Truman Institute, 2020), pp.28-31.

3 On the demarcation of the 1906 boundary see J. Burman, ’British Strategic Interests versus Ottoman Sovereign Rights: New Perspectives on the Aqaba Crisis, 1906’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 37, (2009), pp.275-92.

4 K. Eder, ’Europe’s Borders: The Narrative Construction of the Boundaries of Europe’, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 9, (2006), pp.255–56; on the Turkish case, see E. J. Zürcher, ’The Vocabulary of Muslim Nationalism’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Vol. 137 (1999), pp.81-92.

5 T. I. Bierkster, ’State, Sovereignty and Territory’, in W. Carlsnaes, T. S. Risse and B. A. Simmons (eds), Handbook of International Relations (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), pp.157-76.

6 S. Krakover, ’A Boundary Permeability Model Applied to Israel, Egypt, and Gaza Strip Tri-border Area’, Geopolitics and International Boundaries, Vol. 2, (1997), pp.28-29.

7 On the history of Gaza, see J. P. Filiu, Gaza: A History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

8 The Question of Palestine and the United Nations (New York: United Nations, 2008), pp.3–6.

9 United Nations, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement no. 11, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, Report to the General Assembly, 1947, vol. 1; United Nations General Assembly, Ad hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Report of Sub-Committee 1, 19 November 1947; see also E. Ben-Dror, ’The Success of the Zionist Strategy vis-à-vis UNSCOP’, Israel Affairs, Vol. 20 (2014), pp.19–39.

10 Recently in the limits of the Israeli port city of Ashdod.

11 Maps of partition from the Fabregas Collection, File P-26/763, Israel State Archives (ISA).

12 ’Deliberations of the Ad-Hoc Committee’, Hatsofe, 23 November 1947.

13 ’On the Boundaries’, Davar, 14 November 1947; on the strategic significance of the Suez Canal at that time, see C. B. Selak Jr., ’The Suez Canal Base Agreement of 1954’, American Journal of International Law, 49 (1955), pp.487–505.

14 Regarding the highly protracted debate on the history of the 1948 War, the most balanced account of that war is B. Morris, A History of the First Arab – Israeli War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008).

15 A. Brezner, The struggle for the Negev 1941-1948 (Israel: The Ministry of Defense, 1994), pp. 229-36; A. Ayalon, The Givati Brigade: Facing the Egyptian invader (Israel: The Ministry of Defense, 1963), pp.18-49; A. Cohen, M. Cohen and A. Mendelsohn, The Negev Brigade in the War of Independence (Self-Published, 2011), pp.116-20; K. M. Pollack, Arabs at War (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), pp.15–16.

16 S. Turgan, ’The battle of Yad Mordechai: The evacuation of Yad Mordechai in the War of Independence’, Ale Za’it VaCherev, Vol. 4 (2002), pp.185–204.

17 Brezner, The Struggle for the Negev, pp.232–35; Cohen, Cohen and Mendelson, The Negev Brigade, pp. 135–141.

18 Brezner, The Struggle for the Negev, pp.116–227; Ayalon, The Givati Brigade, pp.81–83.

19 D. Tal, ’Between Intuition and Professionalism: Israeli Military Leadership during the 1948 Palestine War’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 68, (2004), p.894.

20 Protocol of the Meeting of the Provisional Government, 26 December 1948, ISA.

21 Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine to the Security Council, July 12, 1948 and Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, September 16, 1948, file FM-5200/1, ISA; United Nations, Security Council, S/863, Text of Suggestions Presented by the United Nations Mediator on Palestine to the Two Parties on 28 June 1948.

22 Ayalon, The Givati Brigade, p.356; Tal, ’Between Intuition and Professionalism’, p.894; A. Carmel, The victorious commander – Assaf Simchoni, (Tel Aviv: Ydioth Aharonoth and Chemed, 2009), pp.213, 227; For the deployment of the IDF forces in the south, see Intelligence Service/3, Rehovot Base, Deployment of Forces in the South, 29 September 1948, file 1949-8287-27, Israel Defense Force Archive (IDFA).

23 ’Operation Yoav Directive’, Ma’arachot, 263-4, (June 1978), p.111; David Ben Gurion, War Diary, G. Rivlin and E. Oren (eds) (Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense, 1983), pp.733, 737–38; A. Brezner, The origins of the Israeli armored corps (Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense, 1995), pp.196–97.

24 Yiftach/Intelligence to D(South) Front, Enemy’s Deployment, 21 September 1948, file 1949-1021-23, IDFA; Enemy Forces Operating in the South According to information of Prisoners and Enemy Documents, 31 October 1948, file 1951-128-18, IDFA; The Battle for the Negev, Text of a Lecture by Igal Alon, 1 November 1948, file 1950-2289-80, IDFA; Order no. 274a, Mohammed Haider, Minister of War and Marine, Cairo, 8 August 1949, file FM-1871/9, ISA; M. Sharett to R. Shiloach, October 8, 1948, in Y. Freundlich (ed.), Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, May 14 – September 30, 1948 (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 1984), p.44; Pollack, Arabs at War, pp.19–21; Ben Gurion, War Diary, p.747.

25 Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 20 October 1948, Comments of Ben Gurion, ISA; The Battle for the Negev, Text of a Lecture by Igal Allon, 1 November 1948, file 1950-2289-80, IDFA; Summary of Information, 55 Bn. Intelligence Officer, 25 October 1948, file 1949-1041-23, IDFA; Ayalon, The Givati Brigade, pp.431–538; Z. Ofer and T. Ofer, Yiftach: a Palmach brigade in the War of Independence (Yiftach Veterans Self-Publishing, 2013), pp.252–53, 260–61; M. Bar-On, Givati like all others: The history of the 55^th battalion in the War of Independence (Ef’al: The Association for the Research of the History of the Defense Force, 2008), pp.164–67; Y. Nachmias, The 52^nd battalion, Givati Brigade at the War of Independence, 1948 (Modi’in: Efi Meltzer, 2001), pp.279–95, 320–23.

26 The Battle for the Negev, Text of a Lecture by Igal Allon, 1 November 1948, file 1950-2289-80, IDFA; Summary of Information, 51 Bn. Intelligence Officer, 26 October 1948, Summary of Information, 55 Bn. Intelligence Officer, 28 October 1948 and Summary of Information, 3 November 1948, file 1949-1041-23, IDFA; Front D/Operations to General Staff/Operations, 8 December 1948, file 1975-922-1025, IDFA; Bar-On, Givati like others, pp.180-81; Ben Gurion, War Diary, pp.785–86.

27 The Battle for the Negev, Text of a Lecture by Igal Allon, 1 November 1948, file 1950-2289-80, IDFA; Map of the Offensive East of Fallujah Pocket and deployment of the 151 Bn., December 1948, file 1950-2169-31, IDFA; Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 31 October 1948, Comments of Ben Gurion, ISA; ’Ashdod and Beit Jibrin’, Palestine Post, 29 October 1948.

28 The compact, and dense form of the Egyptian defensive line is illustrated in a map based on aerial photos of the Rafa – Khan-Yunis Sector, presumably from mid-December 1948, file 1951-128-18, IDFA.

29 Weekly Intelligence Reports, 9 December and 19 December 1948, Daily Intelligence Reports, 11-14 December and 28 December 1948 and 2 January 1949 file 1950-2289-80, IDFA; ’Operation Chorev Directive’, Ma’arachot, 263-4 (June 1978), p.129.

30 A Translation of the Egyptian Operation Directive No. 2 for the Rafa Sector, 19 December 1948, file 1951-128-18, IDFA; Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 8 December 1948, Comments of Ben Gurion, ISA; ’Operation Asaf’, Ma’arachot, 263-4 (June 1978), pp.124–25.

31 ’Operation Chorev’, Ma’arachot, 263-4 (June 1978), pp.126–30; Tal, ’Between Intuition and Professionalism’, p.905.

32 Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 26 December 1948, Comments of Ben Gurion, ISA; Golani Brigade, Chorev Operation Directive, 16 December 1948, Operation Directive, 19^th Bn., 22 December 1948, Directive for the Abasan Raid, 22 December 1948, Report on the Abasan Raid, 23 December 1948, Summing-up of the Operations of the 19^th Bn. in Chorev, 29 January 1949 file 1951-128-18, IDFA; The 13^th Battalion in the War of Independence, https://www.golani13.org.il (accessed 17 January 2019).

33 Ben Gurion, War Diary, pp.912–13.

34 ³⁴ ’Operation Chorev’, pp.130–132; Tal, ’Between Intuition and Professionalism’, pp.906–07; Ben Gurion, War Diary, pp.912–13; S. Cohen-Shani, Between Tel Aviv and Cairo: The Gaza Strip in the War of Independence (Nes Tsiona: Dorot, 2007), p.103; N. Lorch, ’The British Ultimatum in Operation Chorev’, Maarachot 294–295 (1984), p.77.

35 G. Heichal, ’Operation Chorev as a Final Stage of the Subordination of the Palmach to the IDF’, Iunim Bitkumat Israel Vol. 1 (1991), pp.132–34.

36 Lorch, ’The British Ultimatum’, p.77; Ben Gurion, War Diary, pp.914–17; Tal, ’Between Intuition and Professionalism’, pp.906-07; Cohen, Cohen and Mendelson, The Negev Brigade, pp.271–73.

37 Operation Chorev Directive (2), 28 December 1948 file 1951-128-18, IDFA; Alert Directive Stage B, 30 December 1948 and Directive for Chorev Stage B, 2 January 1949, Ma’arachot, 263-4, (1978), pp.133–34; Ben Gurion, War Diary, pp.919–21; Tal, ’Between Intuition and Professionalism’, pp.907-08; Brezner, The origins, pp.258, 264–66; Cohen, Cohen and Mendelson, The Negev Brigade, pp.268-69; M. Pa’il, ’1948, 1956, 1967, The Three Battles of Rafah – El-Arish’, Maarachot Vol. 193 (1968), pp.6–9.

38 Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 2 and 5 January 1949, 6–7, 11, 16–18 and Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 27 January 1949, 4, ISA; Lorch, ’The British Ultimatum’, pp.76–83.

39 N. Caplan, ’A Tale of Two Cities: The Rhodes and Lausanne Conferences, 1949’, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21 (1992), p.6.

40 Sharett to the delegation to Rhodes, 14 January 1949 and to (Walter) Eytan, 16 January 1949, Telegrams sent by Sharett to Eytan, 19, 21, 22, 24 January 1949 and 14 February 1949, Yadin to Eytan, 12 February 1949, file FM-2453/15, ISA; Proceedings of the Provisional Government, 19 January 1949, pp. 4–6, and 23 January 1949, pp.2–4, ISA; G. Sheffer, Moshe Sharett: Political biography, (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2015), p.428.

41 The Egypt Israel General Armistice Agreement signed on 24 February 1949 file FM-4372/2, ISA.

42 United Nations General Assembly, A/RES/194 (III), 11 December 1948.

43 Caplan, ’A Tale of Two Cities’.

44 M. Shemesh, The Palestinian National Revival (Sde Boker: University of Ben Gurion Press, 2012), pp.85-86.

45 A. Shlaim, ’The Rise and Fall of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza’, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 20 (1990), pp.38-42; D. Shiftan, Jordanian Option (Tel Aviv: Hkibbutz Hameuchad, 1986), p.72.

46 Michael Comay to A.D. Makintosh, 4 October 1948, Freundlich, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, p.19, M. Sharett to W. Eytan, 5 October 1948, ibid., pp.21-27, D. Ben Gurion to M. Sharett, 8 October 1948, ibid., 44, M. Sharett to G. Meirson, 5 November 1948, ibid., p.141.

47 Ilan Asia, The core of the conflict (Jerusalem: Yad Izhad Ben-Zvi, 1994), p.94.

48 Ibid., pp.50–66.

49 The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), vol. VI (1949), pp.926-27; United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, Third Progress Report, 21 June 1949, file FM-2447/10, ISA; Caplan, ’A Tale of Two Cities’, pp.21–23.

50 M. Sharett to W. Eytan, 9 November 1948, Freundlich, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, p.155; R. Shiloach to M. Sharett, 20 November 1948, ibid., pp.209-210; M. Sharett to W. Eytan, 30 November 1948, ibid., pp.248-49; Ben Gurion, War Diary, p.837.

51 Proceedings of a Consulting Meeting Regarding the Peace Talks with the Arab States, 12 April 1949, file, FM-2447/3, ISA.

52 Ibid.

53 Proceedings of Consultation Meetings Regarding the Peace Talks with the Arab States, 19 and 22 April 1949, FM-2447/3, ISA.

54 Moshe Sharett’s comments in the meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs Committee, 2 May 1949, file FM-2451/3, ISA; Moshe Sharett, Davar Davour, Y. Sharett and R. Sharett (eds) (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Sharett Memorial, 2016) vol. 2, pp.367, 407.

55 Proceedings of meeting 16\309 of the Israeli Government, 24 May 1949, p.27, ISA; The Minister in Switzerland (Vincent) to the Secretary of State, May 9, 1949, FRUS, vol. VI, p.989; Memorandum by the Acting Secretary to the President, ibid., p.1060; Mark F. Ethridge to the Secretary of State, June 8, 1949, ibid., pp.1096-097; See also S. L. Fried, They shall not return (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2018), p.190.

56 Proceedings of meeting 32\309 of the Israeli Government, 17 August 1949, pp.13–14 ISA; Sharett to the Israeli Delegation at Lausanne, 21 August 1949, file FM-2451/3, ISA; ’The US Aspires to Detach the Southern Negev from Israel and Annex it to Arab States’, Al-HaMishmar, 21 August 1949.

57 Caplan, ’A Tale of Two Cities’, pp.26-28; Y. Tovi, ’Ben Gurion, Sharett and the Question of the Gaza Strip’, Iyunim Bitkumat Israel, 13 (2003), p.148; ’No American Pressure on Israel to Repatriate Refugees or Make Territorial Concessions’, Davar, 22 August 1949.

58 United Nations Assistance to Palestine Refugees, Interim Report of the Director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (New York, 1951); First Interim Report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East, 16 November 1949 (Clapp Report); Moshe Sharett’s Comments on the 1^st Meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, 9 November 1949, Davar Davour, pp.875–76; ’The Clapp Plan for the Rehabilitation of the Refugees’, Hatsofe, 22 December 1949.

59 United Nations Consular Commission for Palestine, General Committee, Egyptian proposals for the return of refugees of Gaza, United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), A / AC.25 / Com.Gen / W.10, 16 February 1950; Moshe Sharett’s Comments on the 1^st Meeting of the Kneset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, 9 November 1949, Davar Davour, p.875.

60 The IDF Chief of the General Staff to the Foreign Minister, 19 February 1950, file FM-4372/2, ISA.

61 Modus Vivendi Agreement Between Israel and Egypt Signed on 22 February 1950, file A-4183/8, ISA; Gideon Rafael to The Chairman, United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, 28 February 1950, file FM-2451/3, ISA; Map of the Modus Vivendi Agreement, file TT-25/12, ISA; ’An Agreement for the Partition of the No-man’s Land’, Haboker, 26 February 1950; ’The Village of Dimra to Israeli Rule’, ibid., 21 March 1950.

62 Y. Cohen, ’The Demarcation of the Boundary between Israel and Egypt, the 1949 Precedent’, Maarachot Vol. 294-295 (1984), p.14.

63 Krakower, A Boundary Permeability Model, pp.36–37.

64 Filiu, Gaza: A History.

65 On the recent barriers, see ’Israel Completes “Iron Wall” Underground Gaza Barrier’, Al-Jazeera, 7 December 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/7/israel-announces-completion-of-underground-gaza-border-barrier (accessed 6 February 2022).