The Gaza Strip: Its History and Politics : from the Pharaohs to the Israeli Invasion of 2009Few areas on Earth have more history, ancient and present, per inch of its territory than the Gaza Strip. In antiquity, Gaza was a horn of plenty, the hub of fabulous networks of desert and maritime trade. Egyptian, Persian, and Assyrian emperors fought over it, as did Alexander the Great, Richard the Lionheart, Saladdin, and Napoleon. More recently, Gaza's fame has been of quite a different kind - a place of crisis, anguish, and misery. Since 170,000 Palestinian refugees arrived there in 1948, and the Strip has become one more piece in the intractable Middle Eastern puzzle. It has gone through a succession of bloody upheavals, passing from Egyptian to Israeli to PLO to Hamas rule, all the while remaining a volatile geopolitical flashpoint. Apart from separating Israel and the refugees in the southwestern corner of Palestine, the Strip's borders coincide with other momentous fault-lines: between Islamism and secularism, tradition and modernity, East and West, and between the comfortable first and the wretched third world. Author Nathan Shachar is a veteran correspondent who has covered Gazan affairs for more than three decades. He has personally witnessed much of the turmoil which has made the Gaza Strip a permanent item of news bulletins for 60 years. This book relates the Gaza Strip's rich and tumultuous history in a highly readable text, which includes time-lines for all the major events and personalities (from the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III to Hamas' leader Ismai'l Haniye). The book brings perspective to the recent Israeli invasion of the Strip and its political and social aftermath. |
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The Gaza Strip: Its History and Politics : from the Pharaohs to the Israeli ... Nathan Shachar No preview available - 2010 |