Rafah

Rafah was an important trading city during the early Arab period, and one of the towns captured by the Rashidun army under general 'Amr ibn al-'As in 635 CE.[25] Under the Umayyads and Abbasids, Rafah was the southernmost border of Jund Filastin ("District of Palestine"). According to Arab geographer al‑Ya'qubi, it was the last town in the Province of Syria and on the road from Ramla to Egypt.[26]

A Jewish community settled in the city in the 9th and 10th centuries and again in the 12th, although in the 11th century it suffered a decline and in 1080 they migrated to Ashkelon. A Samaritan community also lived there during this period. Like most cities of southern Palestine, ancient Rafah had a landing place on the coast (now Tell Rafah), while the main city was inland.[21]

In 1226, Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi writes of Rafah's former importance in the early Arab period, saying it was "of old a flourishing town, with a market, and a mosque, and hostelries". However, he goes on to say that in its current state, Rafah was in ruins, but was an Ayyubid postal station on the road to Egypt after nearby Deir al‑Balah.[26]

Rafah appeared in the 1596 Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Gaza of the Liwa of Gazza. It had a population of 15 households, all Muslim, who paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, occasional revenues, goats and/or bee hives.[27]

In 1799, the Revolutionary Army of France commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte passed through Rafah during the invasion of Egypt and Syria.[28]

Rafah was the boundary between the provinces of Egypt and Syria. In 1832, the area came under Egyptian occupation of Muhammad Ali, which lasted until 1840.

The French explorer Victor Guérin, who visited in May 1863, noted two pillars of granite which the locals called Bab el Medinet, meaning "The Gate of the town".[29] In 1881, Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria wrote: "Fragments of gray granite pillars, still standing, are here to be met with about the road, the fields, and the sand, and we saw one lying on the ground half buried... The pillars are the remains of an ancient temple, Raphia, and are of special importance in the eyes of the Arabs, who call them Rafah, as they mark the boundary between Egypt and Syria."[30]

In 1917, the British army captured Rafah, and used it as a base for their attack on Gaza. The presence of the army bases was an economic draw that brought people back to the city.

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Rafah had a population of 599 inhabitants, all Muslim,[13] increasing in the 1931 census to 1,423, still all Muslims, in 228 houses.[31]

Rafah 1931 1:20,000

In the 1945 statistics Rafah had a population of 2,220, all Muslims,[32] with 40,579 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[14] Of this, 275 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 24,173 used for cereals,[33] while 16,131 dunams were un-cultivable land.[34]

Mosque in Rafah, destroyed during the Gaza War

After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Egypt governed the area (see Palestinian Protectorate) and refugee camps were established. In the 1956 war involving Israel, Britain, France, and Egypt, 111 people, including 103 refugees, were killed by the Israeli army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah, during the Rafah massacre. The United Nations was unable to determine the circumstances surrounding the deaths.[35][36]

During the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israel Defense Forces captured Rafah with the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, the population was about 55,000, of whom only 11,000 lived in Rafah itself.

On Friday, 9th June 1967, the Israeli army bulldozed & blew up 144 houses in Rafah refugee camp killing 23 inhabitants.[37]

In the summer of 1971, the IDF, under General Ariel Sharon (then head of the IDF southern command), destroyed approximately 500 houses in the refugee camps of Rafah in order to create patrol roads for Israeli forces. These demolitions displaced nearly 4,000 people.[38] Israel established the Brazil and Canada housing projects to accommodate displaced Palestinians and to provide better conditions in the hopes of integrating the refugees into the general population and its standard of living;[39] Brazil is immediate south of Rafah, while Canada was just across the border in Sinai. Both were named because UN peacekeeping troops from those respective countries had maintained barracks in those locations. After the 1978 Camp David Accords mandated the repatriation of Canada project refugees to the Gaza Strip, the Tel al-Sultan project, northwest of Rafah, was built to accommodate them.[40]

During the early months of First Intifada on 25th April 1989 Rafah resident Khaled Musa Armilat, aged 22, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Khan Yunis. In a letter to a Member of Knesset, March 1990, Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated that the dead man's brother had been interrogated and stated that he had been killed by Border Police but four months later he blamed the army. Rabin added the matter was being investigated by the Israeli Police.[41]

In May 2004, the Israeli Government led by, yet Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon approved another mass demolition of homes in Rafah. Therefore, he obtained the nickname "the bulldozer".[42]

In September 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip but Rafah remained divided, with part of it on the Egyptian side of the border under Egyptian rule. It has been claimed that it was in order to cope with the division of the town, that smugglers have made tunnels under the border, connecting the two parts and permitting the smuggling of goods and persons.[43]