Gaza Strip

• 1. Introduction

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  The Gaza Strip is 41 km long and between 6 and 12 km wide, a sliver of land squeezed against the Mediterranean Sea. Into those 365 square kilometres are packed just over 2 million people, most of them Palestinian refugees and their descendants. It is one of the most densely populated territories on earth. Egypt borders it on the southwest, Israel on the east and north, and the sea lies to the west. Gaza City is its capital and largest city.

  This is a place defined by lines drawn after a war. The Green Line of the 1949 Armistice Agreements set its boundaries at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Both signatories said that line was not an international border, yet it has shaped life here for generations. How did a coastal plain of expanding villages become a territory that rights groups call an open-air prison? Who has governed it, and who has claimed it? The answers run through Cairo, Jerusalem, refugee camps, and the chambers of the United Nations.

• 2. Refuge And Façade

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  On the 22nd of September 1948, in Egyptian-occupied Gaza City, the Arab League proclaimed the All-Palestine Government. The move was partly meant to limit Transjordan's influence over Palestine. Six of the league's then-seven members recognized the protectorate, all except Transjordan: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

  Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees had fled or been expelled into the Strip during the 1948 war. By the war's end, 25% of Mandatory Palestine's Arab population was crowded into Gaza, though the Strip made up only 1% of the land. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA, was established that year to run refugee programmes. From the end of 1949, those displaced received aid directly from it.

  The Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement of the 24th of February 1949 fixed the line between Egyptian and Israeli forces. Palestinians in Gaza or Egypt were issued All-Palestine passports, but Egypt did not grant them citizenship. The government itself was accused of being little more than a façade for Egyptian control, with negligible independent funding. It moved to Cairo and was dissolved in 1959 by decree of Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser.

• 3. Years Of Occupation

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  On the 3rd of November 1956, during the Suez Crisis, the Israel Defense Forces attacked Egyptian and Palestinian forces at Khan Yunis. The city resisted, and Israel answered with heavy bombing that inflicted heavy civilian casualties. After the Israeli 37th Armored Brigade broke through fortified lines, an alleged massacre followed. UNRWA director Henry Labouisse reported to the UN General Assembly on the 15th of December 1956 that 275 people were killed, of whom 140 were refugees and 135 local residents. Israel ended that occupation in March 1957.

  In June 1967, during the Six-Day War, the IDF captured Gaza. Under the head of Israel's Southern Command, Ariel Sharon, dozens of Palestinians suspected of resistance were executed without trial. Between 1967 and 1968, Israel evicted roughly 75,000 residents, whom Golda Meir described as a fifth column. At least 25,000 more were prevented from returning after the war. The Strip lost about a quarter of its prewar population.

  In December 1967, the Security Cabinet brainstormed what to do with the Arab population of the occupied territories. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol suggested that the people of Gaza might leave if Israel restricted their access to water. Financial incentives soon followed to encourage Gazans to emigrate. In 1970-71, Sharon implemented a five finger strategy, breaking the Strip into five zones, bulldozing thousands of homes and exiling Bedouin families to the Sinai.

• 4. Settlements And Decline

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  Gush Katif was the first Israeli settlement bloc in the Strip, planted where a small kibbutz had briefly existed between 1946 and 1948. That kibbutz had been part of the Jewish Agency's eleven points in the Negev plan, in which eleven villages were built across the Negev in a single night. Between 1967 and 2005, Israel established 21 settlements in Gaza, taking up 20% of the territory.

  The economy grew at roughly 9.7% per year from 1967 to 1982, driven largely by work inside Israel, which gained a large unskilled and semi-skilled workforce. Gaza's farmers fared worse. One-third of the Strip was appropriated, water grew scarce, and citrus cultivation declined under prohibitions on planting new trees and taxation favoring Israeli producers. Direct exports to Western markets were barred except through Israeli marketing vehicles. The political economist Sara Roy called the pattern structural de-development.

  On the 26th of March 1979, Israel and Egypt signed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. It provided for Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which the Egyptians agreed to keep demilitarized. The treaty did not deal with the final status of the Gaza Strip, which remained under Israeli military administration. Afterward, a 100-meter-wide buffer zone known as the Philadelphi Route was established along the 11 km border with Egypt.

• 5. Uprisings And Authority

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  On the 9th of December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp, an Israeli army truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers. Palestinians charged that the collision was deliberate; Israel denied it. The crash sparked the First Intifada, a sustained series of protests, civil disobedience, and violence. It featured graffiti, barricading, stones, and Molotov cocktails alongside general strikes, boycotts, and refusals to pay taxes. The uprising lasted until the Madrid Conference of 1991, though some date its end to 1993.

  In May 1994, following the Oslo Accords, a phased transfer of authority to the Palestinians began. Much of the Strip came under Palestinian control, except for settlement blocs and military areas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, chose Gaza City as its first provincial headquarters. Between 1994 and 1996, Israel built the Gaza-Israel barrier, which Palestinians largely tore down at the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000.

  The Second Intifada erupted after the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit and Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa compound on the Temple Mount. It brought rocket attacks and bombings from Gaza, especially by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The violence is estimated to have killed about 3,000 Palestinians, 1,000 Israelis, and 64 foreigners. A barrier on the Gaza-Egypt border was begun in 2004.

• 6. The Hamas Takeover

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  In the Palestinian parliamentary elections of the 25th of January 2006, Hamas won 42.9% of the vote and 74 of 132 seats. Israel, the United States, the EU, Russia, and the UN demanded that Hamas accept previous agreements, recognize Israel, and renounce violence. When Hamas refused, they cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. Political disorder and economic stagnation pushed many Palestinians to emigrate.

  In January 2007, fighting erupted between Hamas and Fatah, with the deadliest clashes in the northern Gaza Strip. A truce on the 30th of January collapsed within days. From 2006 to 2007, more than 600 Palestinians were killed in the factional fighting, with 160 killing each other in June alone. Hamas spokesman Mousa Abu Marzook blamed the conflict on Israel, saying constant economic pressure caused the real explosion.

  By the 14th of June 2007, in the course of the Battle of Gaza, Hamas fully controlled the Strip, seizing institutions and replacing Fatah officials. President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and formed a new government without Hamas. After the takeover, Israel and Egypt closed their border crossings. On the 23rd of January 2008, after weakening the steel reinforcement of the border barrier, Hamas destroyed parts of the wall at Rafah, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans crossed into Egypt seeking food and supplies.

• 7. The Blockade

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  In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, dismantled its settlements, and left the territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority. A temporary blockade became indefinite after the 2007 Hamas takeover, and Egypt began its own blockade that same year. Egypt maintains a strict blockade in order to isolate Hamas from Islamist insurgents in the Sinai.

  Israel describes the blockade as necessary to prevent the smuggling of weapons, and has also called it economic warfare. The Israeli human rights organization Gisha reports that it undermines basic living conditions. The Red Cross has reported shortages of basic medicines and equipment such as painkillers and x-ray film. A 2015 UN report estimated that 72% of the population suffers from food insecurity, and over 75% depend on humanitarian aid.

  Much of the territory is depopulated by buffer zones on the Israeli and Egyptian borders. Israel first imposed a 50-meter zone, expanded it to 150 m in 2000, and to 300 m by 2009-10. A 2012 UN report estimated that 75,000 metric tons of potential produce were lost each year to the buffer zone, worth US$50.2 million. Following the 2013 Egyptian coup, Egypt's military destroyed most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, weapons, and goods. The enforcement of a no-fishing zone along the coast meant Gaza's fishing industry virtually ceased.

• 8. Occupied Or Not

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  Despite the 2005 disengagement, the UN, international human rights organisations, and most governments consider Gaza still occupied by Israel. Israel controls Gaza's air and maritime space and six of its seven land crossings. It maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory and reserves the right to enter at will. Gaza depends on Israel for water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.

  Israel rejects this. Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni said in January 2008 that Israel got out of Gaza and dismantled its settlements, leaving no soldiers after the disengagement. On the 30th of January 2008, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the Strip was not occupied, finding Israel had not exercised effective control since 2005. Some legal scholars agree, including Yuval Shany and Avi Bell, who argued the blockade does not amount to effective control.

  On the 19th of July 2024, the International Court of Justice took a different view. It held that the decisive criterion is not constant physical military presence but whether authority has been established and can be exercised. The court concluded that Israel's sustained abuse of its position, through annexation and permanent control, rendered its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful. It ruled that Israel should pay full reparations to the Palestinian people.

  This is the legal frame against which the war that began on the 7th of October 2023 unfolded. That day, paramilitaries led by Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades invaded southwest Israel, killing at least 1,300 people and taking at least 236 hostages. On the 9th of October, Israel declared war and imposed a total blockade. Defense minister Yoav Gallant said there would be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Over 60,000 Palestinians have since been killed, almost half of them women and children. A UN commission concluded in September 2025 that there are reasonable grounds to find four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out. In October 2025 a US-led peace plan took effect, and Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted on the 17th of November 2025, set out provisions for transitional governance.