Abstract
This Chapter opens a window to the human landscape
of the Israeli military rule in Gaza through the figure of Nissim A'arav, who
served as the officer of the Employment Office in Gaza from 1973 to 1983. Evri delves
into his father's extensive activity in the field of safety and supervision of
Gaza workers employed in Israel, using traces of memory, family photographs,
and archival documents, as well as his connections with various Gaza and
Israeli figures in the first decades of the state. Nissim, born in Basra, Iraq,
a resident of D Neighborhood in Beer Sheva was appointed during the formative
years of the economic and planning integration of the Gaza Strip into southern
Israel, facilitating social mobility in the Israeli periphery. Working in Gaza,
within the mechanism of occupation paradoxically allowed Nissim to reconnect
with the Arab culture in which he was raised, while elsewhere, Israeli identity
pushed aside Arabness as a cultural marker. Following the occupation, Arabness
and Arab identity, including that of Nissim A'arav Evri and others, shifted from
being a burden to an asset in the service of the State.