History
Beit Lahia has an ancient hill and nearby lay abandoned village ruins. A mihrab, or mosque alcove indicating the direction of salaah (prayer), is all that remains of an ancient mosque to the west of Beit Lahia dating to the end of the Fatamid period and beginning of the Ayyubid Dynasty of Saladin, and two other mosques dating to the Ottoman period.
On January 4, 2005 seven civilian residents of Beit Lahia, including six members of the same family, were killed, with the incident blamed on an IDF shelling of agricultural area where they were working. On June 9, 2006, eight civilians were killed, while picnicking on the northern Gazan beach in Beit Lahia. The dead included seven members of the Ali Ghaliya family. with evidence eventually pointing to planted Palestinian explosives to repel an Israeli attack. On December 26, 2008, a crude rocket fired by Palestinian militants fell short of its target in Israel, striking a house in Beit Lahia and killing two Palestinian schoolgirls. The town as a frequent target of airstrikes by Israel and a scene of intense battle between in Israel and Hamas. The Ibrahim al-Maqadna mosque was hit by Israeli missiles, resulting in thirteen deaths.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)