Shirat HaYam
place
Shirat HaYam (Hebrew: שִׁירַת הַיָּם, lit. 'Song of the Sea') was an Israeli settlement established in 2001 on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea west of Neve Dekalim in the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip that existed until 2005.
Population
About fifteen families lived in trailers or abandoned houses that reportedly had been Egyptian Army officer's barracks from the period when Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip.
Evacuation
On 14 August 2005, immediately prior to the execution of the disengagement plan evacuation, Aryeh Yitzhaki, an Israeli military historian residing in Shirat HaYam, proclaimed independence as "The Independent Jewish Authority in Gaza Beach." He called himself The Temporary Chairman "until the election of the 2,500 citizens" in his new country. He followed through with his claim by sending an appeal for recognition to the United Nations and the Red Cross. Four days later, when the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli Police came to evacuate Shirat Hayam, he defended this self-proclaimed country alone with an M-16 after ascending the roof of his home. The event ended peacefully after a few hours, and the settlement was successfully evacuated.
While the standard policy adapted by the Israeli government was to destroy all residential property prior to the retreat from Gush Katif, the cement structures in this settlement were not touched until several weeks later.
The evicted residents of the village chose to remain together as a group and move to Maskiot in the Jordan River valley to build an agricultural settlement. Since the Maskiot site, a former military base, was not ready for settlement, the group moved to adjacent Hemdat.
“Shirat HaYam” enters the record as place. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shirat, HaYam and place can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Shirat HaYam” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Shirat, HaYam and place provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2909110. Authority coordinates are 31.363, 34.271. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001 and 2005.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shirat HaYam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.