Foundations of a geopolitical entity - the Gaza Strip 1947–1950

The Gaza Strip is a territory of 365 square kilometres located in the southern coastal plain of Palestine. Distinguished by a long, narrow spatial form and named after its main metropolis, the city of Gaza, it forms a political entity whose formal status has not been determined since its formation in the 1948 War. The aim of this article is to explore the circumstances in which the Gaza Strip was formed as an allegedly provisional geopolitical entity that has survived for over 70 years. It will concentrate on the formative period between the allocation of British Mandate Palestine’s southern coastal strip to a prospective Arab state by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in September 1947 and the signing in February 1950 of the Modus Vivendi agreement between Egypt and Israel that had finally delineated an armistice line that forms Gaza Strip’s boundary with Israel until recently.