Remember GUSH KATIF?

Jews and their Israelite ancestors have lived in Gaza since Biblical times. A historic Jewish community existed in Gaza City prior to its expulsion by the British, for safety reasons, during the infamous 1929 riots by the city's Arabs. Land for the village of Kfar Darom was purchased in the 1930s and settled in 1946. It was evacuated following an Egyptian siege in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Gush Katif began in 1968, when Yigal Allon presented an initiative for the founding of two paramilitary settlements in the center of the Gaza Strip. He viewed the breaking of the continuity between the northern and southern Arab settlements as vital to Israel's security in the area, which had been captured the previous year in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1970, Kfar Darom was re-established as the first of many Israeli agricultural villages in the area. Allon's idea was ultimately designed with five key areas slated for Israeli presence along the length of the Gaza Strip. After the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty and the dismantling of the Yamit south of Rafah, the fourth and third strips were united into one bloc that would become known as Gush Katif.
On May 29th, 1977,  the first Gazan Jewish village in modern times, Nezer Hazani, was formally established amid the sand dunes of the Gaza Strip, when a military outpost was transformed into a civilian community. On the day of the opening ceremony, the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Head of the Labour Party, announced:

 “This is a great day for the State of Israel and Jewish settlement”. It is a day that symbolizes the fortification of our presence in this area, which since the Six Day War has become an integral part of the state and its security.”
At the culmination of the celebration, the prime minister himself took a mezuzah and personally affixed it on the doorpost of one of the homes, underlining Israel’s commitment to the reestablishment of ancient Jewish life in Gaza.

Throughout the 1980s new communities were established, especially with the influx of former residents of Sinai. Most of the bloc's communities were established as agricultural cooperatives (moshavs), where the residents from each settlement would work in clusters of greenhouses just outside the residential areas.
In the Gush Katif Bloc’s greenhouses, advanced technology was used to grow pest-free leafy vegetables, herbs and flowers. Most of the organic agricultural products were exported to Europe. In addition, the community of Atzmona had Israel’s largest plant nursery, and with 800 cows, the Katif dairy was the second largest in the country. Telesales and printing were other notable industries.
The sum of exports from the greenhouses of Gush Katif, which were owned by 200 farmers, came to $200,000,000 per year and made up 15% of the agricultural exports of the State of Israel.
The combined assets in Gush Katif were estimated at $23 billion.

As far as I know, it was the first time in the world that successful farming was accomplished on former sand dunes. 

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