The present-day Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip had been occupied by Egypt from the Strip's inception in 1949, shortly after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, until Egypt's defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, after which the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip began. Egyptian rule in Gaza before the Six-Day War had been continuous with the exception of a brief period from October 1956 to March 1957, when Israel invaded and occupied Gaza for a short time during the Suez Canal Crisis.