“For millennia, Rafah was the first stopping place for merchants crossing the desert from Africa to Asia.”-— What does that mean??? Is that supposed to be the glory days for Palestinian Arabs??? Rafah appeared in the 1596 Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Gaza of the Liwa of Gazza. It had a population of 15 households, all who paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, occasional revenues, goats and/or bee hives, to the Ottoman Turkish Empire. In 1799, the French Army of the Orient, led by Napoleon, passed through Rafah during the French campaign in Egypt and Syria. Rafah was the boundary between the provinces of Egypt and Syria. In 1832, the area came under Egyptian occupation of Muhammad Ali, which lasted until 1840–(8 years).
On 9 January 1917, British forces captured Rafah, and subsequently used it as a staging post for their first attempt to capture Gaza from the Ottoman Empire.