During recent remarks to leaders of local Jewish community relations councils, it was reported that Karen Paikin Barall, the vice president of government relations at the Jewish Federations of North America, said: “We should all look forward to the day we can hope to buy townhouses in the West Bank and Gaza.”
It seems that some of those present became distressed, even offended.
One official was quoted saying, “I thought JFNA stood for a democratic state. That’s what was troubling to me.” Most, however, came away with the impression her words were jocular, “a joke that had fallen flat.” Nevertheless, another communal official who was not present received alarmed texts from nearly a dozen people while the session was underway.
Of course, what these “leaders” missed in their liberal progressivism is what would be undemocratic in that supposed situation. After all, more than 2 million Arabs live in Israel, representing 22% of the population. Since 2005, no Jews have resided in the Gaza Strip, making it a Palestine apartheid entity.
The history of Jews and Gaza has been consistent as it has been turbulent, and at times, terrible.
Some 3,000 years ago, Samson carried away the gates of Gaza. In 145 BCE, Yonatan the Hasmonean besieged Gaza, and even after the city surrendered, it remained hostile to the Hasmoneans; in 96 BCE, it was overrun by Alexander Jannaeus. During the revolt against Rome, it was again sacked by Jewish rebels in 66 C.E. One of the pillars in the Great Mosque of Gaza, brought there from Caesarea, was an inscription in both Hebrew and Greek that read: “Hananiah son of Jacob.”
In 637 C.E., the Arabs conquered Gaza, killing Jews who served in the city’s defense, among them descendants of those who during the Byzantine period built a synagogue there in 508 C.E. Subsequently, Jews returned and for three centuries until the Crusader conquest in 1100 C.E., the Jewish community in Gaza restored itself. After the Crusaders’ defeat, centuries passed before Jews managed to re-establish their presence in the 14th century.
In 1481, it was recorded that around 70 Jewish families resided in Gaza City. The 17th century saw Rabbi Yisrael Najara producing his poetry and Natan the Prophet declaring Shabtei Tzvi the Messiah. In 1799, with the Napoleon conquest, the Jews fled again. Under the late Ottoman period, stagnation set in all around, and Jews were unwelcome in Gaza.
However, they returned in 1886, at the initiative of Zev Klonimus Wissotzky, a leader of the Ḥovevei Zion movement, who invested in commercial ventures in Gaza, Shchem and Lod. Throughout the centuries, Jews resettled the Land of Israel, all of it.
During World War I, Jews in Gaza again were subjected to Ottoman oppression, and many were banished. The Margolin family was the first to return at the war’s end; later, 54 Jews were registered as residing there in the 1922 British census. In the larger Gaza Sub-District, including the Western Negev, there were 830 Jews. Then came the watershed of 1929.
The Oct. 22, 1929 edition of the Haaretz newspaper reports on the criminal investigation of several Arabs of the Al-Maghar village of Gaza. They were suspected of inciting their fellow villagers to throw rocks at the Jews fleeing Gaza during the previous August traveling in a convoy to escape the riots, a mission organized by the two Jewish wives of British policemen serving in Gaza.
Earlier, on Aug. 26, 1929, Arabs from Gaza—some who were employed in the agricultural fields and orchards of Be’er Tuvia—participated in the attack on the moshav. They killed Dr. Haim Yizraeli, the Mandate-employed doctor for the south of the country, while he was attending to a wounded Arab. Binyamin Tzvi Rosen, who had hidden in the synagogue, was beaten, stabbed to death and disemboweled, and then rolled up into Torah scrolls taken from the ark and set afire.
Gaza Arabs participated in the attacks on the kibbutzim of the Western Negev as well as Kfar Darom, which was founded in 1946 on land purchased by Jews in the early 1930s, today located across the street from the Deir Al-Balah Primary School.
Between 1948 and 1967, no Jewish civilians lived in Gaza, and after 2005, those who had returned to resettle the area (more than 8,000) were expelled in fulfillment of then-Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan. The Palestinian Authority/Fatah Party took control until they were quickly and violently ousted by the Hamas terrorist organization in June 2007, two years after the Israelis had vacated. Then came the invasion of Hamas from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Obviously, the presence of Jews resettling the Jewish national homeland is not necessarily a cause of Arab terror.
Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly expressing opposition to plans for Jews to resettle Gaza or at least become neighbors with the Gazans—terming the idea “not realistic”— there were two significant gatherings to promote the idea. One was during this past Sukkot holiday near Gaza and the other, in Jerusalem, back on Jan. 28. Both were attended by ministers and Knesset members from coalition parties.
In a recent essay in Mosaic, Shany Mor argued, among other points, that what was wrong with the “settler movement”—one that was engaged in “state capture”—is that ultimately, wherever they were, they were a main cause of Arab violence, Fatah or Hamas. Justifying his thesis, he wrote:
“When a settler was murdered [at Homesh], the perverse logic of the entire settlement movement took over … the threat to their safety remained and was, if anything, more acute, so more soldiers needed to be sent there to protect them, and roadblocks had to be set up, and so forth. The Jenin sector, once the quietest part of the West Bank, quickly became, together with nearby Nablus, not just a focal point of skirmishes among settlers, the army, and Palestinian militants, but also the epicenter of a new wave of terrorism targeting Israelis in central Israel.”
Of course, no Jews present in Gaza for 23 years is a fact that does not alter his thinking. Nor does the lack of Jews anywhere across the former Green Line in Judea and Samaria for 19 years affect it.
I’m not sure that resettling Jews in Gaza at this moment in history is doable or even advisable. And for sure, partisan protest gimmicks like trying to cross over into the Strip during the war are insane. But instead of Jews arguing among themselves, a better discussion would focus on asking Arabs why they can live in Jaffa, Nazareth and Haifa, yet any suggestion of Jews living among Arabs is non-acceptable and non-negotiable.
Liberals and human-rights activists should equally be asked if the banning of Jews from Gaza can be defined as principled apartheid. Diplomats should be pressed to explain why they are supporting a policy of an exclusive uni-ethno state—moreover, one that is autocratic, theocratic and unsustainable economically.
