Occupation of the Gaza Strip by the United Arab Republic in the context of "1948 Palestine War"

The United Arab Republic (UAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية المتحدة, romanized: al-Jumhūriyya al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 to 1971. It was initially a short-lived political union between Egypt (including Egyptian-governed Gaza) and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded from the union following the 1961 Syrian coup d'état. Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until it was formally dissolved by Anwar Sadat in September 1971.

The republic was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser as the Egyptian president. The UAR was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, which was dissolved in 1961. It was a brief pan-Arab union.

The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from Palestine, the British withdrew from their Mandate of Palestine, and four neighbouring Arab nations entered the territory and joined the war. By the end of the war, the State of Israel had held or captured about 78% of former territory of the mandate, the Kingdom of Jordan had captured and later annexed the area that became the West Bank, and Egypt had captured the Gaza Strip. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the State of Israel and laid out the Green Line demarcating these territories. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.

The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947, a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which planned for the division of the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states. During this period, the British still maintained a declining rule over Palestine and occasionally intervened in the violence. Initially on the defensive, the Zionist forces switched to the offensive in April 1948. In anticipation of an invasion by Arab armies, they enacted Plan Dalet, an operation aimed at securing territory for the establishment of a Jewish state.

The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. They formally ended the hostilities of the 1948 Palestine War and also demarcated the Green Line, which separated Arab-controlled territory (i.e., the Jordanian-annexed West Bank and the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip) from Israel until the latter's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.

To monitor the agreed-upon de facto border, the United Nations (UN) established supervising and reporting agencies; discussions related to the ceasefire's enforcement led to the signing of the separate Tripartite Declaration of 1950, in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and France pledged to take action within and outside of the UN in order to prevent violations of the frontiers. It also outlined their commitment to peace and stability in the area, their opposition to the use or threat of force, and reiterated their opposition to the development of an arms race between Arab countries and Israel.

The All-Palestine Protectorate (Arabic: محمية عموم فلسطين; 22 September 1948–1959), also known as All-Palestine or the Gaza Protectorate, was a short-lived client state with limited recognition, corresponding to the area of the modern Gaza Strip, established in the areas of former Mandatory Palestine captured by the Kingdom of Egypt during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Protectorate was declared on 22 September 1948 in Gaza City, and the All-Palestine Government was formed. The President of the Gaza-seated administration was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the former chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, while the Prime Minister was Ahmed Hilmi Pasha. In December 1948, just three months after the declaration, the All-Palestine Government was relocated to Cairo and was never allowed to return to Gaza, making it a government in exile. With a further resolution of the Arab League to put the Gaza Strip under the official protection of Egypt in 1952, the All-Palestine Government was gradually stripped of its authority. In 1953, the government was nominally dissolved, though the Palestinian Prime Minister, Hilmi Pasha, continued to attend Arab League meetings on its behalf. In 1959, the protectorate was de jure merged into the United Arab Republic, while de facto turning Gaza into a military occupation area of Egypt.

While a de facto Egyptian puppet state since its inception, there are differences of opinion as to whether the All-Palestine Protectorate represented an abortive but genuine attempt at an independent Palestinian Arab state, or if it was simply a façade for an Egyptian occupation of part or all of former Mandatory Palestine right from the get-go. Though the All-Palestine Government claimed jurisdiction over the entire territories of the former British Mandatory Palestine, at no time did its effective jurisdiction extend beyond the Gaza Strip, with the West Bank annexed by Transjordan and Israel holding the rest. The All-Palestine Protectorate relied entirely on the Egyptian government for funding and on UNRWA to relieve the plight of the Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. During most of its existence, the All-Palestine Protectorate was under de facto Egyptian administration, though Egypt never made any claim to or annexed any Palestinian territory. Egypt did not offer the Gazan Palestinians citizenship. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and Egypt were issued All-Palestine passports, and those living in the Gaza Strip were not permitted to move freely into Egypt. However, these passports were only recognized by six Arab countries.

The idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has evolved through various proposals and disputes. During the British mandate period, numerous territorial and constitutional models were proposed for Palestine, none of them winning the agreement of all parties. In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was voted for. The leaders of the Jewish Agency for Palestine accepted parts of the plan, while Arab leaders refused it. This triggered the 1947–1949 Palestine war and led, in 1948, to the establishment of the state of Israel on a part of Mandate Palestine as the Mandate came to an end.

The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian occupation, and the West Bank was ruled by Jordan, before both territories were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then there have been proposals to establish a Palestinian state. In 1969, for example, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) proposed the establishment of a binational state over the whole of the former British Mandate territory. This proposal was rejected by Israel, as it would have amounted to the disbanding of the state of Israel. The basis of the current proposals is for a two-state solution on either a portion of or the entirety of the Palestinian territories—the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which have been occupied by Israel since 1967.

Israeli passage through the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran was restricted by Egypt, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia, for much of the time between the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the 1967 Six-Day War. Since the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979, Israel has enjoyed freedom of navigation through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran.

Egypt was one of the main Arab countries that invaded Israel after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Although the Egyptians were defeated during this conflict, they managed to occupy what would become known as the Gaza Strip and did not recognize Israel as a sovereign state following the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The ceasefire between the two countries was being tested by the Egypt-based Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency, which was prompting Israeli reprisal operations. Egypt had closed the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli vessels in 1949, preventing imports and exports amidst Israel's austerity period. Tensions worsened as the Egyptians gradually strengthened their blockade of Israel, culminating in the Suez Crisis of 1956, during which Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in order to force a re-opening of the blockaded waters, though the Suez Canal was closed until 1957, when Israeli troops withdrew from Egypt. However, in the mid-1960s, Egypt imposed another blockade against Israel, which had declared that any such action would be a casus belli. The Egyptian military subsequently mobilized along Israel's border and expelled the United Nations Emergency Force, leading to the Six-Day War of 1967, which ended in an Egyptian defeat and the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1967, the Suez Canal was closed until 1975. In 1973, Egypt attempted to retake the Sinai Peninsula by force, triggering the Yom Kippur War; although the initial Egyptian offensive was successful, the conflict ended in an Israeli victory. In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize Israel as part of a bilateral peace treaty, in exchange for which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. The two countries have remained at peace since 1979, and the overall Egypt–Israel relationship is generally cordial and cooperative.

The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was a military and peacekeeping operation established by the United Nations General Assembly to secure an end to the Suez Crisis of 1956 through the establishment of international peacekeepers on the border between Egypt and Israel. Approved by Resolution 1001 (ES-I) of 7 November 1956, the UNEF was developed in large measure as a result of efforts by UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and a proposal from Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester B. Pearson, who would later win the Nobel Peace Prize for it. UNEF was deployed along Sinai and Gaza until May 1967, when Egypt requested UNEF to withdraw its forces.

The UN General Assembly later established the UN Emergency Force II to supervise the ceasefire between Egyptian and Israeli forces at the end of the Yom Kippur War.

Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar (Arabic: يحيى إبراهيم حسن السنوار, romanized: Yaḥyá Ibrāhīm Ḥasan al-Sinwār; 29 October 1962 – 16 October 2024) was a Palestinian militant and politician who served as fourth chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from August 2024, and as the second leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from February 2017, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh in both roles. He was killed in a clash with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in October 2024.

Sinwar was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egyptian-occupied Gaza in 1962 to a family who had been expelled or fled from Majdal 'Asqalan during the 1948 Palestine War. He finished his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic studies. In 1989, Sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences in Israel for orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered to be collaborators. He spent 22 years in prison until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. During his time in prison, Sinwar continued to coordinate the military activities of Hamas. Sinwar was one of the co-founders of the security apparatus of Hamas.