Preludes

In Gaza, an unlikely eyewitness refreshes Dina Ezzat 's memory about one largely forgotten clue to the Tripartite Aggression: the Palestinian cause

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"We never had any doubts about what was going on. Here in Gaza we knew it right from the start. Egypt was being attacked but so were Palestinian rights." Thus Samir Guenina, the 62-year-old Palestinian operating Basyouni's kunafah store, one of a few places in Gaza with electricity; most of the city will stay in darkness till the Egyptian engineers have completed putting the grid back together. Nodding to a customer, he ladles generous portions onto the plates and takes a deep breath. "Israelis had wanted a pretext to attack Egypt since [Gamal Abdel-] Nasser came to power," he says suddenly. "It's true that most people think of his decision to nationalise the Suez Canal -- to provide a resource for building the [Aswan] High Dam -- as the reason behind the 1956 War. But to us, to the people of Gaza, it was obvious that it was just a pretext. We realised that Israel was out to get Nasser. Nasser was a threat and had to be eliminated," he says.

"He was building the High Dam to initiate developments in Egypt," Guenina goes on. "He wanted the country to be independent and strong. Even worse, though, he was intent on the Palestinians having what was rightly theirs. This would never have been acceptable for Israel. Nasser," he sighs. "Nasser was a true father to the Palestinians. As far as he was concerned, there was no question about it. He would do anything to support them. He even sent us subsidy rations, giving us more per person than Egyptians: two instead of three piastres for a kilogramme of rice. No other leader cared for the Palestinians as much. And this was why he was attacked in 1956 and again in 1967. They actually started their manoeuvres in 1954. In that year, too, they attacked Gaza." He is totally sure of himself. "I realise that some Egyptians like to blame Nasser for bringing war on the country by nationalising the Suez Canal and again for closing off the Tiran Straits in 1967. Palestinians know he would've been targeted no matter what he did, because he supported them."

Guenina was only 12 in 1956. Of the incursion on Gaza he remembers only "that they went on the streets and declared that the Israeli army was in charge, even started to build up a civil administration, massacring every element of popular resistance". For four months the Gazans lived in fear. Like many Palestinians, even when the Israeli army withdrew, replaced by UN forces, Guenina could tell this was not the end of the conflict. Though he was too young to register what happened in 1948, he grew up with the narrative of the Nakba clear in his mind. The Israeli objective was unequivocal: "to eliminate the Palestinian cause altogether, and to abort the Arab unity Nasser tried to build in the face of their existence". In 1964 Guenina made his first trip to Egypt, on the Gaza-Cairo train, then under Egyptian civil administration. "Under Nasser," he remembers, "Egypt was another country. The whole of the Arab world was different." Called for military service in the Egyptian army, Guenina was posted in Rafah, then "woke up to a nightmare" on 5 June 1967. Overnight, the Israelis had achieved what they failed at in 1956: Gaza and Sinai were occupied.

This time, they stayed. "Every young man was called and they packed us all into trucks and dispatched us to Egypt." For Palestinians, under Nasser, Egypt was as good as home -- notwithstanding the shock and dismay of being expelled from their actual homes. "I arrived alone, with none of my family members." He blended into the army, however, serving until 6 October 1973. "I was with the Egyptians when they crossed the Canal." He also married an Egyptian, but, despite being given a travel document, he was never granted full nationality. Thousands met with the same fate, moving between Gaza and Egypt until they were trapped in the wake of the second Intifada. After the Oslo Accords, Guenina lost his Egyptian travel document and was not given a Palestinian replacement. He has been unable to leave Gaza since: "My family is in Egypt, I am here. My children are studying and working there, so I can't bring them here and compromise their future. What future could they possibly have in Gaza? We must remain separated."

In common with that of thousands, Guenina's life has been more or less controlled by the Israeli authorities since 1967, the Palestinian Authority having been unable to reunite Palestinians with their Egyptian families. Though not a particularly religious Muslim, Guenina is a Hamas supporter. Ironically he sees in them not an extremist group but "people who want to resume Nasser's project of retrieving Palestinian rights". Living under siege, he says, it is the Palestinians who insist on the Hamas government though they realise Hamas will be unable to grant the Palestinians the state they have been struggling for any time soon; sometimes, indeed, he doubts that this state will ever come into being, and at such moments he thinks it would be better if Egypt simply annexed Gaza. The dream of a Palestinian state suffered a massive blow on Nasser's death, he says.

"We mourned that death more than anybody else, as Palestinians. Today, our dream is that Hamas will manage to do what he was prevented from doing. And we know that when Hamas is targeted today, it is for the same reason that Egypt was targeted in 1956 and 1967 -- to stop that dream from coming true." Before he rushes back to his customers, Guenina sounds like someone dictating his will: "Always remember that 1956 was but a prelude to 1967, and that Egypt was targeted because it supported Palestinians."