Noa T. Shaindlinger

This book project explores Israel’s first, and brief, occupation of the Gaza Strip in the immediate aftermath of the 1956 tripartite military onslaught on Egypt, as a laboratory of occupation. Facing international pressure as well as, internally, a debate about potential annexation, the Israeli military rule consisted of multiple, and often contradictory, approaches for the control and management of a newly acquired territory and its hostile population. The 1956 occupation offered Israel an opportunity to experiment governing a subject, non-citizen, Palestinian population. It is here that the military proposed the creation of “civilian administration”; developed its open-fire rules, methods of counterinsurgency and intelligence gathering.