The city grew around a Bedouin settlement near the ancient Ptolemaic outpost of Rhinocorura. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims misidentified the site as the Sukkot of the Bible. ʻArīsh means "palm huts" in Modern Standard Arabic. M. Ignace de Rossi derived Arabic name from the Egyptian ϫⲟⲣϣⲁ Jorsha, "noseless", an analogue of Greek Rhinocorura. New fortifications were constructed at the original site by the Ottoman Empire in 1560. During the Napoleonic Wars, the French laid siege to the fort, which fell after 11 days on February 19, 1799. During World War I, the fort was destroyed by British bombers. It was later the location of the 45th Stationary Hospital which treated casualties of the Palestine campaign. The remains of those who died there were later moved to Kantara Cemetery. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, proposed ʻArīsh as a Jewish homeland since neither the Sultan nor the Kaiser supported settlement in Palestine. In 1903, Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, agreed to consider ʻArīsh, and Herzl commissioned the lawyer David Lloyd George a charter draft, but his application was turned down once an expedition, led by Leopold Kessler had returned and submitted a detailed report to Herzl, which outlined a proposal to divert some of the Nile waters to the area for the purpose of settlement. El-ʻArīsh Military Cemetery was built in 1919 marked the dead of World War I. It was designed by Robert Lorimer. On December 8, 1958, an air battle occurred between Egyptian and Israeli air forces over ʻArīsh. ʻArīsh was under military occupation by Israel briefly in 1956 and again from 1967 to 1979. It was returned to Egypt in 1979 after the signing of the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. In the Sinai mosque attack of 24 November 2017, 305 people were killed in a bomb and gun attack at the mosque in Bir al-Abd in al-Rawda, North Sinai near ʻArīsh.
Geography
Arish is in the northern Sinai and is about from the Rafah Border Crossing with the Gaza Strip. Arish is the closest larger settlement to Lake Bardawil.
Transport
The city is served by el Arish International Airport. The construction of the northern coast highway in Egypt was expected to be finished by 2008 linking El-Qantarah at the Suez Canal in the west to the Gaza Strip border passing by Arish. The railway line from Cairo is also under re-construction and it recently reached the "Ser and Qawarir zone" west of Arish. This route was formerly part of the Palestine Railways built during World War I and World War II to connect Egypt with Turkey. The railway was cut during the formation of Israel. The North Sinai is a milestone for the Egyptian government planners to redistribute the high-density population in the Nile Delta, and it is expected that by accomplishing the transportation and irrigation projects, three million Egyptians will settle in North Sinai.
