Gaza: A History by Jean-Pierre Filiu (review)

When I first visited the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the summer of 1985, I began my research in the West Bank. I have never forgotten a conversation I had with a Palestinian academic I was interviewing. After telling him how much I was looking forward to working in the Gaza Strip, he told me, “There is no need to go to Gaza. Everything you need to learn about Palestinians is right here in the West Bank.” I was quite shocked by his comment, but as I subsequently learned, it reflected Gaza’s continued marginalization — political, economic, and historical — even among Palestinians themselves.

Gaza has long been treated as an appendage of the West Bank and Jerusalem, two areas that have long been the focus of Palestinian historiography. Although the Gaza Strip has forced its way into the world’s political consciousness particularly over the last decade, it has done so by virtue of the terrible violence in which it is often engulfed, reducing Gaza and her people to a facile, singular stereotype, absent of context or past, belying the area’s fascinating and monumental history and political significance.

Jean-Pierre Filiu’s Gaza: A History brilliantly challenges the shallow and painful singularity through which Gaza has long been viewed. Filiu has written what will undeniably become the definitive study of Gaza’s history, a truly masterful work, rich in detail and analytical depth, nuanced in its political analysis.

Stunning in scope, the book begins in the 18^th century BCE with a discussion of the Hyksos people who used the region around Gaza as a base for their conquest of Egypt — as did many subsequent invaders — and ends in the present day with the struggle over political reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Filiu’s sweep of history is neither superficial nor inaccessible; rather, it is a substantive, dynamic history, meticulously and authoritatively told. There are so many interesting (and not widely known) facts, some more peripheral than others, but still important. For example, opponents of the Palestinian cause often point to Hajj Amin al-Husayni and his support for the Nazi war effort as an example of Palestinian anti-Jewishness. Yet as Filiu writes, “The fascist war machine might broadcast the exhortations of the mufti of Jerusalem … but they found little response in the Arab world. The Nazi armed forces recruited only 6,300 auxiliaries of Arab origin, of whom only 1,300 came from Palestine, Syria, or Iraq. By way of comparison, across the entire course of the conflict, 7,578 Arabs enlisted in the British army in Palestine alongside 10,483 Jewish volunteers” (p. 48).

Filiu focuses on the period since 1947 and compellingly argues that Gaza’s history cannot be separated from that of Palestine and is, in fact, essential to it: “It is in Gaza that the foundations of a durable peace should be laid … The Gaza Strip, the womb of the fedayin and the cradle of the intifada, lies at the heart of the nation-building of contemporary Palestine. It is vain to imagine that a territory so replete with foundational experiences can be ignored or marginalized. Peace between Israel and Palestine can assume neither meaning nor substance except in Gaza …” (p. 340).

Not only is Gaza central to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is a necessary component of regional peace. For a resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would alter regional dynamics dramatically, creating a real context for stability and opportunity. As Filiu makes clear, what happens to Gaza will affect us all and we ignore this fact at our peril.