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Shokat as-Sufi

Municipalities of the State of PalestineRafah GovernorateTowns in the Gaza Strip

Shokat as-Sufi is a Palestinian town in the southern Gaza Strip, south of Rafah and adjacent to the inoperable Yasser Arafat International Airport. It is one of the poorest localities in the Gaza Strip, and has underdeveloped infrastructure.According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) census in 1997, Shokat as-Sufi had a population of 5,663 of which 90% were Palestinian refugees. The gender make-up of the town was 49.3% male and 50.7% female. According to the PCBS, in 2017, it had a population of 16,445.Shokat as-Sufi is governed by a municipal council of eleven members including the mayor, who since 2005 has been Mousa Abu Jlaidan.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Shokat as-Sufi (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

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N 31.258644444444 ° E 34.282444444444 °
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Nearby Places

Dahaniya

Dahaniya (Arabic: الدهنية) was a village near the southernmost point in the Gaza Strip, evacuated in Israel's disengagement of 2005. Dahaniya was located in a no man's land between Israel and the Gaza strip, in between the Israeli kibbutz of Kerem Shalom and the Palestinian city of Rafah, south of Yasser Arafat International Airport (also called Dahaniya Airport) and close to the Egyptian border. It had been administered by the Israeli Civil Administration since the Oslo accords. Dahaniya was founded in 1977 as a sanctuary for Bedouin collaborators with Israel from the Sinai Peninsula. in 1976 The elders of the Egyptian-Bedouin tribe had reached an agreement with the Israeli government regarding exchange of land. They had given Israel property rights for land in Sinai on which to found villages, and in exchange, they had been given the rights to the village of Dahaniya. Hundreds of Bedouin families from the Sinai desert found refuge there. In the following decades, the residents of Dahaniya collaborated with Israeli security forces in their efforts to locate those it deemed as infiltrators, and families of collaborators from the West Bank and Gaza Strip joined the village. In 1994 many of the residents left the village to the larger cities in Israel (including Tel Aviv and Beersheba). The Palestinians considered the residents of Dahaniya traitors and worthy of execution, and it was nicknamed the "village of the collaborators". Since the beginning of the Second Intifada, Dahaniya residents feared for their lives. Village residents were banned from entering the Gaza Strip, the village was ringed by a security fence, and the entry and exit into the village was administered by Israel. Among the Palestinians who would enter the village regularly were teachers, doctors, water and electricity workers and traders. The Kerem Shalom border crossing was used by residents working in Israel and the Gush Katif settlements. Some of the residents held Israeli documents, while others held Palestinian documents (issued by the Israeli Civil Administration). During the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the village's residents were evacuated to Israel. All of the buildings in the village except for the mosque were subsequently destroyed by Israeli bulldozers.

Battle of Rafa
Battle of Rafa

The Battle of Rafa, also known as the Action of Rafah, fought on 9 January 1917, was the third and final battle to complete the recapture of the Sinai Peninsula by British forces during the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the First World War. The Desert Column of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) attacked an entrenched Ottoman Army garrison at El Magruntein to the south of Rafah, close to the frontier between the Sultanate of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, to the north and east of Sheikh Zowaiid. The attack marked the beginning of fighting in the Ottoman territory of Palestine. After the British Empire victories at the Battle of Romani in August 1916 and the Battle of Magdhaba in December, the Ottoman Army had been forced back to the southern edge of Palestine as the EEF pushed eastwards supported by extended lines of communication. This advance depended on the construction of a railway and a water pipeline. With the railway reaching El Arish on 4 January 1917, an attack on Rafa by the newly-formed Desert Column became possible. During the day-long assault, the Ottoman garrison defended El Magruntein's series of fortified redoubts and trenches on rising ground surrounded by flat grassland. They were eventually encircled by Australian Light Horsemen, New Zealand mounted riflemen, mounted yeomanry, cameliers and armoured cars. In the late afternoon, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade captured the central redoubt and the remaining defences were occupied shortly afterwards.