The Origins of the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli Communities Across From It
The surging sea of hatred in Gaza is exactly what these Israeli communities were meant to ‘envelop’
A car carrying the son of Jerusalem Mayor Gershon Agron, blown up by an Egyptian mine near Nahal Oz, 1957Credit: Government Press Office
“Beyond the furrow of the border surges a sea of hatred and revenge, revenge that looks toward the day when the calm will blunt our alertness, the day when we shall listen to the ambassadors of malign hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our arms…
“What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For … years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home” (translation by Benny Morris, in “Israel’s Border Wars”).
The words could be called prophetic if they didn’t describe a situation that has been a constant reality since Israel’s early years of statehood. Last Saturday’s concatenation of massacres in communities situated across the border from Gaza was only the latest assault, if the most horrific by a factor beyond measure.
Perhaps the eloquent self-awareness of the words is the best evidence that they were spoken not by a contemporary leader, but one of yesteryear – in this case, Moshe Dayan, in the eulogy he delivered over the grave of Ro’i Rotberg nearly seven decades ago.
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The 21-year-old Rotberg was the security officer of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, who on April 29, 1956, was murdered, with his body then mutilated, by Arabs from across the border in Gaza.
Dayan may have expressed empathy for the Palestinians, but it was for rhetorical effect only: His prescription was for the Jews to remain “ready and armed, tough and hard.”
Nahal Oz was struck again this past Shabbat, when more than a thousand terrorists stormed the border from Gaza and attacked the kibbutz and some 20 other Israeli settlements in the area known in Hebrew as the “Gaza Envelope” (Otef Aza).
Toddlers with their nannies going into a bomb shelter, Nahal Oz, during the Six-Day War.Credit: Government Press Office
That awkward term encompasses more than 50 communities in close proximity to Gaza, collectively home to an estimated 70,000 residents. Depending on the vagaries of national politics, these communities have intermittently enjoyed tax benefits that Israel has always used to encourage settlement in outlying areas, particularly along the country’s borders.
‘Enveloping’ Gaza
To understand why Israel felt the need to build a string of communities to “envelop” Gaza, it’s useful to know where the concept of the Gaza Strip originated. After all, it’s not defined by geological formations, but by human factors.
In fact, explains Motti Golani, a professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, and author of such books as “Israel in Search of War: The Sinai Campaign, 1955-1956” and “Palestine between Politics and Terror, 1945–1947,” the term “Gaza Strip” has only been in use since 1949. When Israel’s post-independence borders were drawn up, as part of the armistice agreement signed with Egypt on February 24, 1949, the little notch of territory at the corner where Israel’s Mediterranean border meets its border with Sinai, was not claimed by either state.
Israel was reluctant to incorporate Gaza within its borders: During the War of Independence, tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled or been expelled to Gaza. By 1948, notes Golani, “there were already more refugees living there than native residents.” Although Egyptian forces remained in control there at the time of the armistice, that country preferred putting Gaza under military rule to annexing it.
Still, at the time, the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip was only a line on a military map: There was no physical barrier then. And as Michael Milshtein explains, “there were infiltrations, not only from Gaza but also along the border with the West Bank,” which was left in in Jordanian hands in 1949. For the most part, the “infiltrators” were simply refugees hoping to return to their homes within Israel, which regarded them as a threat to its security.
Ariel Sharon tours the Negev during the preparations for the Gaza disengagement in 2005.Credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO
By the mid-’50s, however, Egypt began arming fedayeen to carry out cross-border raids. Ro’i Rotberg was a victim of one such raid.
Settling the borders
Dr. Milshtein, a former adviser on Palestinian affairs to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, who today has positions at both Tel Aviv University and Reichman University, explains that Israeli leaders, in particular the country’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, believed that “the line of the furrow” one plowed would ultimately determine where the line of the border would be; hence the strategy of placing new settlements along all of the country’s borders, even during the decades before statehood.
Be’eri and Nirim, for example, two of the kibbutzim overrun on October 7, 2023, were both founded on the night of October 5-6, 1946, together with nine other communities.
A solder named Drora doing military service as a teacher in Sderot, with two of her pupils.Credit: Moshe Fridan / GPO
Nahal Oz was founded five years later, becoming the first settlement to be set up by the Nahal Brigade, an army unit that combines military service with civilian settlement activity. Ultimately, the military outposts created by Nahal are converted into civilian settlements.
The “Gaza envelope” also includes several moshavim (semi-collective farming communities) and of course the towns of Sderot, Netivot and Ofakim, but these have always been anchored by the kibbutzim, which were by design situated immediately along the border.
The moshavim and the towns in the periphery were more often than not populated by new immigrants, often from North Africa, who were given little choice about where they would be settled, and didn’t always know what they were getting into.
The response
Israel’s history, and its poisonous relationship with the Palestinians of Gaza, have been reflected in the tension suffered by the communities adjacent to the border. The murderous fedayeen attacks of the early 1950s were partly behind Israel’s decision to go to war in 1956, which led to its temporary occupation of Gaza. A far longer occupation took place in the wake of the Six-Day War, ending with Ariel Sharon’s “Disengagement” from the Strip in 2005.
Hamas’ near-total control of life within the Strip began two years later, and since then, there have been frequent short wars (“operations,” in Israeli terms) every few years. And within Israel, it is always the communities of the “Gaza Envelope” that pay the highest price for the hostilities. But they haven’t always had the unqualified support or assistance of the state.
Palestinians celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.Credit: Hassan Eslaiah /AP
I asked Motti Golani if he thought that the secular, Labor movement-affiliated identities of most of the communities attacked last week could explain, if only partially, the physical absence of government officials from the temporary residences, hospitals and funerals of the victims and their families, and the difficulty so many government politicians seem to have in even verbal expressions of compassion and solidarity.
Golani emphasized that he thought the IDF’s inability to anticipate and respond effectively to the marauders was an intelligence failure, and “not intentionally. But, and I say this in great sadness, when Simcha Rothman [the chairperson of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee] said a few months ago, that it’s very fashionable to demand [more] bomb shelters in the Gaza Envelope – but we just don’t have the money, what does that really mean? If you compare that with the millions that have been spent on the Haredim and on the [West Bank] settlements, you understand the order of priorities of this government.”
For years, there has been a “campaign of defamation and incitement against the kibbutz movement,” Golani alleges. A recent example involves Kibbutz Nir David, in the Jezreel Valley, which tried to restrict access to a stream passing through its land to its members. Popular anger exploded at Nir David and at the “pampered” kibbutzim in general.
Also, adds Golani, the kibbutzim are viewed as established and strong, and also – as being peopled by Ashkenazim, though that isn’t completely true. “There are people from all groups and colors,” he says, but stereotypical images of kibbutz members are widespread.
He sums up guardedly: "I don't think that anyone said: We can abandon them. But the poison machine was working overtime. Instead of saying to them, thank you for being where you are... we have [comments like], They brought it on themselves, they are traitors. It's unbelievable. Think of the retired generals who rushed there to fight: Noam Tibon, Yair Golan. And the pilots and fighters, it’s just beyond comprehension. So, yes, I do think that, at least, maybe at the unconscious level, it did not work to the advantage of those who were hit the hardest that they happen to be from the kibbutz movement.”
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