Rafah

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Rafah
رفح
רפיח
Administration : Palastina autonomous areasPalestine Palestinian Territories
Area: Gaza Strip
Governorate : Rafah
Coordinates : 31 ° 17 '  N , 34 ° 15'  E Coordinates: 31 ° 17 '19 "  N , 34 ° 15' 7"  E
 
Residents : 196,000 (2014)
 
Time zone : UTC + 2
 
Community type: Big city
Rafah (Palestinian Territories)
Rafah
Rafah
Rafah on the map of the Gaza Strip

Rafah ( Arabic رفح, DMG Rafaḥ ) is a Palestinian city on the southern edge of the formerly Israeli occupied Gaza Strip , which was completely evacuated on September 12, 2005 . Parts of the city are in Egypt , so the demarcation line ( Philadelphi Passage ) runs right through the city. The only border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is in Rafah. The city is the administrative seat of the governorate of the same name . Rafah City had 152,950 inhabitants in 2014, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The city also has a refugee camp consisting of permanent houses , in which 43,405 (2014) people live. For the Palestinian part of the city and the refugee camp Tall as-Sultan, this results in a population of 196,355.

history

The first mention of Rafah is in an inscription by Pharaoh Sethos I , which dates back to 1303 BC. Chr. Dated. During the campaign of Scheschonq I in the Levant in 925 BC Rafah was the first stop. A good 200 years later, in 720 BC. BC, Šarrum-ken II won here over Egypt. Rafah was also the scene of the Battle of Raphia between Ptolemy IV and Antiochus III. 217 BC Chr.

Under Alexander Jannäus Rafah came to the Hasmonean Empire in the last century BC . As a result, its importance increased and the city was an important trading city near the border of the Syria province with Egypt until the early Arab period. Jewish and Samaritan communities lived in the city; during the Byzantine era, Rafah was a diocese . Towards the end of the 11th century there was a slump, as a result of which the Jewish communities temporarily emigrated to Ashkelon , but returned in the 12th century. In the 13th century, however, there was permanent decline, the city was largely abandoned and fell into disrepair. Ottoman records from the 16th century record only 16 taxpayers in Rafah.

In 1917, Rafah was captured by the British and was the starting point for the attack on Gaza . The presence of the British military ensured an economic boom in the following years. In 1922 the population of the city had grown again to 600, by the end of the British mandate it rose to 2500. In the 1940s, an internment camp was operated in Rafah . This camp received special significance as part of Operation Agatha and was therefore chosen as the code name of the Hagana ship Athena .

city

Rafah became known to a wider public through a military action by the Israeli army in May 2004. The place was used by Palestinian fighters for arms smuggling because of its proximity to the Egyptian border. Due to the isolation of the Gaza Strip by Israel, there were a number of tunnels under the border, which were used for other goods in addition to the aforementioned arms smuggling. As part of Operation Rainbow , carried out by the Israeli military , a large number of houses were destroyed, which was justified with the search for tunnels. There were losses on the Palestinian side . Thousands of Palestinian families were without shelter. The UN Security Council disapproved of the action, with the United States abstaining.

Refugee camp

The Rafah Refugee Camp ( Arabic مخيم رفح) is one of eight Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and is located directly on the Egyptian border. When it was founded in 1949, it was the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The inhabitants came from Arab places in the Negev desert and the coastal plain. Between 1949 and 1967, when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian administration, the integration of the refugees into the population was prevented. When Rafah came under Israeli control in the course of the Six Day War in 1967, the refugee camp had around 55,000 inhabitants, while the city itself only had 11,000.

In 1971, under the command of General Ariel Sharon , then in command of the Southern Command , around 500 houses in the refugee camp were destroyed for the construction and widening of patrol roads. Replacement apartments were made available to the around 4,000 affected residents south of Rafah. After the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, these residents were relocated to the Tall as-Sultan project northwest of Rafah in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the Camp David Agreement . Rafah was divided by the new border, the southern part came under Egyptian sovereignty.

The refugee camp is now directly adjacent to the city. The construction of the Tall as Sultan refugee camp reduced the number of residents, but this was offset by the admission of resettlers from the Canada refugee camp. According to information from UNRWA , the refugee camp had 95,187 residents in 2005. This number contradicts the number of the Palestinian Statistical Office, which put an average number of 58,000 for the same year. UNRWA operates 31 schools in the refugee camp (20 primary and 11 secondary).

Border crossing

British aid supplies passed the Rafah crossing in March 2009

The only border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is in Rafah. It was established in 1979 after the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was signed , which provided for Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula . On the Israeli side, the Israel Airports Authority was responsible for the border crossing.

After the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Israeli-occupied territories as part of the Sharon Plan in September 2005, responsibility for border controls was transferred to the Palestinian Authority . In order to protect Israeli security interests, the Egyptian security post in Rafah was strengthened, and the European Union also secured the border crossing with a control mission.

As a result of the internal Palestinian conflict over Gaza in June 2007 , Egypt ordered the border crossing to be permanently closed even before Hamas came to power in the Gaza Strip. From then on, Rafah became the focus of Palestinian efforts to circumvent the isolation of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt. On January 23, 2008, militant Palestinians blew up the border fortifications in Rafah, and in the days that followed, tens of thousands took the opportunity to move freely into Egypt.

In June 2010, Egypt eased the cordoning off of the border crossing in response to the Ship-to-Gaza incident . The opening of the crossing made it possible to supply the population with relief supplies, but the crossing remained strictly guarded. People could only cross the border with a visa or foreign passport.

After the fall of Egyptian President Husni Mubarak in February 2011 and the rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah mediated by Egypt , the then Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby announced the full opening of the border crossing in Rafah. On May 28, 2011, the crossing was finally opened for passenger traffic, but only women and children can leave the Gaza Strip without a special permit.

Demolition of the Egyptian district

Since the beginning of 2015, Egypt has been planning to completely demolish its district for security reasons and to combat the economically damaging smuggling of subsidized gasoline, and to build a five-kilometer-wide buffer zone on the border.

Infrastructure

railroad

Rafah was the northern terminus of the Sinai Railway until 1916 and was then on the railway line ( Ostbahn ) extended via Lod , which reached Haifa in 1920 and then Beirut and Tripoli in 1942 . 1948–1967 the connection to Israel was cut, and since then that to Cairo . The British military trains in Palestine built in 1917 from Rafah from a 59.5 km long military train in the Negev , where they from south during the excavation of Abu'Irqaiyiq the route of the Ottoman military train Maṣ'ūdiyya Sinai used and standard gauge umspurten and so on 3 Reached Beersheba , May 1918 . After the fighting ended, the route was also used for civilian freight and passenger traffic, but was discontinued in 1928 for lack of profitability. Today most of the railroad tracks in the Gaza Strip have been dismantled.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Palestinian Central Statistical Office
  2. Polybios Historien V.79-86; Raphia ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Franciscan Cyberspot @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 198.62.75.1
  3. a b Rafah Camp UNRWA
  4. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Projected Mid-Year Population for Rafah Governorate by Locality 2004–2006 ( Memento of February 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. Israeli flag lowered over Gaza , CNN , September 12 of 2005.
  6. Palestinians break out of the Gaza Strip , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 24, 2008.
  7. Reuters : Egypt opens border with Gaza Strip , June 1, 2010.
  8. Hamas, EU hail Egypt plan to open Rafah border , The Daily News Egypt, May 26, 2011.
  9. Egypt Foreign Policy U-Turns in Cairo , Der Tagesspiegel , May 4, 2011.
  10. ^ Egypt opens border with Gaza Strip , Focus , May 28, 2011.
  11. ^ Walter Rothschild , Arthur Kirby and the last years of Palestine Railways: 1945–1948 , Berlin: Selbstverlag, 2009, also King's College London Diss., 2009, footnote 611, p. 146. OCLC 495751217
  12. ^ Walter Rothschild, Arthur Kirby and the last years of Palestine Railways: 1945–1948 , Berlin: Selbstverlag, 2009, also King's College London Diss., 2009, footnote 78, p. 27. OCLC 495751217