 Soldier's Square receives its name from an unknown native Palestinian Arab soldier ("feda'i") who died during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and was buried at the site.Prior to Israel's occupation of Gaza in 1967, the center of the site bore a statue pointing north to the rest of Palestine commemorating the soldier.It was pulled down by Israeli authorities and until the 1990s, Soldier's Square was a patch of sand with a white plinth (remnant of the statue) in the center.