[1] During a decisive confrontation in Palestine, less than a year earlier, Demetrius was defeated by his adversaries and had to flee the battlefield, during the Battle of Gaza.
[1] Ptolemy then sent one of his generals, a Macedonian named Cilles, described as one of his close associates by Diodorus Siculus,[2] to take advantage of the victory at Gaza and decisively defeat Demetrius in Syria.
[1][5] Demetrius set an ambush for his adversary and managed to destroy a sufficiently significant portion of their forces, although ancient sources varied between the entirety[2][3] and a small number,[6] to repel the Egyptian incursion.
[1][7] After receiving news of the battle, while he was in Celaenae,[5] Antigonus responded by moving towards the Levant to assist his son in case of an Egyptian counter-offensive, but it never came.
[8] Instead, this victorious ambush seemed to establish a status quo, freezing the Levantine borders; it likely also tilted the balance slightly in favor of the Antigonids, after the defeat at Gaza, in the context of the upcoming peace of 311 BC.