X-Nico

29 unusual facts about Gaza strip


Aarele Ben Arieh

In the early eighties, Ben Arieh developed close ties with potters and carpenters in the Gaza Strip.

Ahmed Qurei

On July 17, 2004, he submitted his resignation amid growing chaos in the Gaza Strip characterized by the kidnapping of Palestinian security officials, including the Chief of Police for the Gaza Strip and five Frenchmen.

Ahmed Yousef

Ahmed Yousef is a senior adviser to Gaza's Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

Amal Murkus

In August 2008 Amal sang at the birthday of Maria Amman, a Palestinian girl from the Gaza Strip who lost her mother, two of her brothers, her aunt and her grandmother after her house was hit by an IDF projectile, which also left Maria severely injured and almost completely paralyzed.

Anat Saragusti

She was the first woman appointed as TV reporter for the Gaza Strip, and for certain short periods of time she was residing in Gaza.

Christopher Voss

He worked cases which included the Jill Carroll case in Iraq, the Steve Centanni case in the Gaza Strip, the Burnham-Sobero Abu Sayyaf case in the Philippines, and the Gonsalves-Howes-Stansell kidnapping in Colombia which culminated in the July 2008 rescue by Colombian forces.

Eraldo Isidori

In 2013, interwieved by journalists of the TV program Le Iene, he made another poor showing, ignoring the word eutanasia (in English euthanasia), declaring that Mozart and Beethoven were Latin American music's composers and affirming that in the Gaza Strip there is a conflict between Christians and Buddhists.

Ghazi Hamad

Ghazi Hamad (غازي حمد) (born 1964 in Yebna) was chairman of the border crossings authority in the Gaza Strip.

Giora Eiland

In early 2003, a few weeks after his retirement from the army and arrival to the NSC, Eiland became aware of Sharon's disengagement initiative – at that stage the initiative had more limited objectives in the Gaza Strip and broader in the West Bank.

Jamal Zahalka

He argues that an apartheid system is already in place, with the West Bank and Gaza Strip separated into "cantons," and Palestinians required to carry permits to travel between them.

James Manly

On 20 October 2012, Manly was arrested by Israel for trying to breach a blockade of the Gaza Strip on the ship Estelle.

Jess Ghannam

Jess Ghannam is an accomplished Palestinian-American doctor and professor who is active in numerous non-governmental organizations and in carrying out humanitarian work, particularly in the Gaza Strip.

He is a board member of the Gaza Community Health Clinic, and has established medical clinics in towns and cities across the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, Khan Younis, Jabalia and Deir el-Balah.

Since the early 1990s, Ghannam has worked extensively in the field of medical development in the occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Mohammad Taha

His son, Ayman Taha, is a spokesman and former fighter for Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Muhammad Sawalha

He has had a hand in organizing several of the flotillas and land convoys attempting to reach the Gaza Strip, through which he has transferred financial aid to Hamas.

Nader al-Masri

He was the only person from the Gaza Strip and one of the only four Palestinians who participated in the Olympics in 2008.

Omar al-Qattan

The former was the first feature film to be entirely shot in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and received several international awards after its premiere at the Director's Fortnight, Cannes.

Paul Larudee

Larudee is a co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) (along with Greta Berlin, Mary Hughes Thompson, Sharyn Lock and Renee Bowyer), which was formed in fall 2006 to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Princess Carolina, Marchioness of Sala

For this organisation she was stationed at the UN headquarters in New York, as well as problematic areas like Eritrea, the Gaza Strip, and in Acheh (Indonesia) after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Rawhi Fattouh

He was elected in 1996 as a representative of the town of Rafah (in the Gaza Strip), where he was born and has lived for most of his life.

Shmuel Zakai

Zakai resigned as commander of the IDF's Gaza Division, a position he had held since March 2004, after failing a polygraph test during an investigation into leaks to the Israeli media during the Days of Penitence operation in the northern Gaza Strip in October 2004.

Timothy Workman

In September 2005, he issued an unprecedented arrest warrant for a retired Israeli Army officer, Major General Doron Almog, based on statements of a Palestinian group about actions in the Gaza Strip.

Vauro Senesi

In June 2011 Vauro Senesi announced his intention to sail with the Free Gaza Flotilla setting out to defy the Israeli blockade of The Gaza Strip.

Yaakov Amidror

Amidror is considered a hawk on security matters and has advocated reoccupying the Gaza Strip.

Yoni Goodman

In 2009, he made several short films for human rights organizations, notably the short film Closed Zone, protesting against the Gaza blockade.

Zahi Khouri

Following the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority in 1993, which granted limited sovereignty to the Palestinians in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Khouri moved back to Palestine in order to establish business ventures there along with several other Palestinian entrepreneurs.

He helped establish the Palestinian Development and Investment Company (PADICO), the largest Palestinian investment company, as well as the Palestinian National Beverage Company, which manufactures and markets Coca-Cola products under official franchise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Zvi Malnovitzer

The following year, Malnovitzer painted “Exodus” (2007), depicting the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the unilateral evacuation of 21 civilian Jewish settlements.


2006 in Israel

May 14 – The Israeli Navy intercepted a Palestinian boat carrying a large amount of explosives near the Gaza Strip in an attempted smuggling operation.

Abraham Hecht

Hecht was featured in a June 23, 1995, article by Larry Yudelson, for his assertion, at a rabbinical gathering, that Jewish Law (Halakha) could permit the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for their proposal at Oslo to withdraw from parts of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

Aisha Association for Woman and Child Protection

AISHA Association for Women and Child Protection (AISHA), established in 2009, is an independent Palestinian women organization working to achieve gender integration through economic empowerment and psychosocial support to marginalized groups in the Gaza Strip with focus on Gaza City and the North area.

Al-Bana

Made from raw material and equipment smuggled into the Gaza Strip using tunnels in Rafah, the al-Bana was the first example, during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, of Hamas' engineers capacity to produce relatively sophisticated weapons.

Amos Yarkoni

In 1955, the frequency and effectiveness of Fedayeen attacks being launched from the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip and the Jordanian-controlled Hebron Hills area against isolated Israeli civilian communities increased, and the IDF searched for new ways to eliminate the threat.

Anita McNaught

On August 14 2006, he was taken hostage in the Gaza Strip along with colleague Steve Centanni.

Dahaniya

Dahaniya (Arabic: دهنية) was a village near the southernmost point in the Gaza Strip, evacuated in Israel's disengagement of 2005.

European Union Baroque Orchestra

Outside of Europe, as well as tours to Japan, USA and South Africa, EUBO has played in less favoured parts of the world as Ramallah and the Gaza Strip, Botswana, Soweto and others.

Froman-Amayreh Agreement

In February 2008, Rabbi Menachem Froman, chief rabbi of Tekoa in the West Bank, and Khaled Amayreh, a journalist close to Hamas, reached an agreement for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that would put an immediate end to all Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers, facilitate the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and end the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip.

Governorates of the Gaza Strip

After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were divided into three areas (Area A, Area B, and Area C) and 16 governorates under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority.

Hassan Ghani

On 31 May 2010 Ghani was involved in the Gaza flotilla, when the Israel Defense Forces attacked an international aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, killing several activists and wounding others.

Herman Bailey

Bailey created an illustration featuring an Israeli firing squad shooting a group of Arabs with a caption reading: "This is the Gaza Strip, Palestine, not Dachau, Germany".

Hilles clan

The Hilles clan is a Palestinian extended family that became known in 2008 for its violent conflict with the de facto Hamas military government in the Gaza Strip.

Israel and legitimacy

M.J. Rosenberg, writing in the Los Angeles Times, argued that the term "delegitimization" is a "distraction", whose purpose is to divert attention away from world opposition to the "illegitimate" occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip, from the "illegal" settlements, and from "the ever-louder calls for Israel to grant Palestinians equal rights".

Kåre Kristiansen

He opposed Israel's unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip, to the point of refusing an invitation to join in an event that also featured moderate Israeli politician and chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior.

Khaled K. El-Hamedi

In the Gaza Strip - Palestine, in January 2010, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority Ismail Haniyeh granted the Medal of courage to the President of the Organization for breaking the siege of the Gaza Strip at (The Conscience of the World) tent that witnessed the signing of the fraternity program between Palestinian and Libyan families.

Mattias Gardell

Gardell was one of eleven Swedish activists from Ship to Gaza participating in the flotilla that tried to break the Israeli embargo of the Gaza strip.

Mohammad Barakeh

In February 2005, Barakeh was threatened by Kahanist activist (and now-outlawed Kach party leader) Baruch Marzel over his pivotal support for Ariel Sharon's evacuation compensation bill, a move that paved the way for Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

Netzarim Junction bicycle bombing

The attack occurred close to the then Israeli settlement of Netzarim, at the main junction of Gaza Strip's north-south highway.

Palestine Olympic Committee

According to Nahil Mabrouk, president of the Palestinian Track and Field Federation, the Palestine Olympic Committee was first founded in 1931, and remained an Olympic member until the 1967 war when the West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied by Israel.

Palestinian political violence

In 1987, a mass revolt, of predominantly civil resistance, called the First Intifada, exploded, leading to the Madrid Conference of 1991, and subsequently to the Oslo I Accord, which produced an interim understanding allowing a new Palestinian authority, the PNA to exercise limited autonomy in 3% (later 17%) of the West Bank, and parts of the Gaza Strip not used or earmarked for Israeli settlement.

Project Reality

All of the maps in PR are new, including some based on real life locations, such as Basrah, Beirut, Fallujah, Karbala, Kufra, Mestia, Muttrah, the Korengal Valley, Helmand Province, the Gaza Strip, Vadsø, and some based on generic fictional locations in the Middle East, East Asia, and around the Black Sea.

Rail transport in Israel

Talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2004 have raised the possibility of reviving the old line from the Gaza Strip to Tulkarm and/or building a new line from Gaza to Tarkumia (near Hebron) with the aim of securely transporting people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank through Israeli territory as well as for transporting cargo to and from the Israeli port of Ashdod destined to the Palestinian Authority.