Is There a History Which Explains Gaza?

In 1571, the Spanish Naval fleet destroyed the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, and from that time onward what had been known as Mare Nostrum, which covered the entire Mediterranean as part of the Roman Empire, became split in half between Western Civilization, a.k.a., Christendom being located on the Northern side, and Eastern Civilization known as Islam controlling the Southern half.

This cultural, political, and religious realignment of what had been the Roman Empire remained as such until the 19th Century, when France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and most of all England developed colonial territories on the territories which comprised the south Mediterranean shelf.

The one exception to this East-West redrawing of the Roman Empire map was the territory between the two regions made up of what is now present-day Turkey, as well as going down the coast through Lebanon and Israel, and extending eastward through what is now Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.

This region was the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic kingdom which stretched from the Balkans down the Saudi peninsula through Mecca and eastward to the Caspian Sea. The whole political and geographic entity collapsed during World War I, and its various segments were parceled out to the victorious Allies at the post-war conference in Versailles.