May 14, 1948 Palestinian Refugees Flee to Gaza from All Over the World

“Under the 1947 Partition plan of the United Nations, Gaza was supposed to be part of a new Arab state, alongside the new Jewish state. But when the state of Israel was proclaimed May 14, 1948, the Egyptian army entered Gaza and the territory became a magnet for Palestinians fleeing from all over the world.

One in four Arabs from the former British mandate took refuge on 1 percent of its land area. Seen another way, 200,000 refugees were packed into a territory inhabited by 80,000 Palestinians. (The proportion is about the same today: 1.2 million refugees out of a population of 1.8 million.) But for the Sinai, those waves of refugees could have settled in refugee camps around Cairo the way they did around Beirut, Damascus and Amman.

(e.g. 200,000 refugees in 1948 become 1,200,000 in 2014! And 80,000 citizens of Gaza became 600,000)

THE EGYPTIANS ADMINISTERED THIS TERRITORY, BUT REFUSED TO ANNEX IT, CONTRARY TO WHAT JORDAN DID IN THE WEST BANK. SO IN 1949, DAVID BEN GURION PROPOSED TO ANNEX THE GAZA STRIP AND TO RESETTLE ITS PALESTINE AND CAPITAL REFUGEES THROUGHOUT ISRAEL.

This offer was rebuffed both by the United Nations and by the Arab states, which would not accept Israeli territorial expansion. An Egyptian-run Gaza inexorably became a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism. It was sometimes directed against Egypt’s ruler, Gamal Adel Nasser, as during an uprising in 1955. Or it could be manipulated by Egyptian intelligence, which trained the first Palestinian Fedayeen – freedom fighters or terrorist, depending on your point of view – for missions in Israel.”

Source: New York Times, August 26, 2014