‘Ahuzat Bayit’ in Gaza’s Sands? Plans to Build a Hebrew-National Garden Suburb

Abstract

In the 1880s, a new Jewish congregation began to develop in a few crowded buildings in the southern Ez-Zitun quarter of Gaza. Traditional Moslem culture demanded that women remain indoors and when in public wear long garments and a scarf. The Jews felt insecure among their Moslem and Christian neighbors and suffered from the wretched hygienic conditions in the streets.

In 1905 the Turkish government planned a garden city named Er-Rimal (The Sands) on the sands between Gaza and the Mediterranean. Beginning in 1909 Gaza’s Jews demanded that the Zionist Organization help them establish a small, separate, modern Jewish suburb in the Er-Rimal area near the coast, just as the founders of the Ahuzat Bayit suburb, north of Jaffa, and the Herzlyia suburb, on Mount Carmel in Haifa, had done. Under pressure from Gaza’s Jews, the Zionist Organization approved the plan, and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) allotted 30,000 francs to the project.

When it became clear that the Turkish government would never appropriate state land for a separate Jewish suburb in Gaza, the JNF backed out of the project, though the Anglo-Palestine Company (APC) Bank continued negotiations with the authorities. Considerable progress was being made when WWI broke out, and negotiations came to an abrupt halt. At the same time, Gaza’s Jews and the APC tried to buy tracts of land from private owners on and near the Ali Muntar hill, east of Gaza, but these efforts, too, were cut short by the outbreak of war.