Gaza is a coastal strip of land located on ancient trade and maritime routes along the Mediterranean coast. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, in the last century it passed from British to Egyptian and Israeli military rule and is now a fenced-in area home to more than 2 million Palestinians.
As British colonial rule in Palestine ended in the late 1940s, violence between Jews and Arabs intensified, culminating in war in May 1948 between the newly created State of Israel and its Arab neighbors. After this thousands of Palestinians took refuge in Gaza. Are fleeing or being expelled from their homes. The attacking Egyptian forces captured a narrow coastal strip 25 miles (40 km) long, running from the Sinai to just south of Ashkelon. The influx of refugees tripled Gaza's population to approximately 200,000.
1950–1960: Egyptian military rule
Egypt placed the Gaza Strip under a military governor for two decades, allowing Palestinians to work and study in Egypt. Armed Palestinian militants, many of whom were refugees, carried out attacks in Israel and retaliated. The United Nations established a refugee agency, UNRWA, which today provides services for the 1.6 million registered Palestine refugees in Gaza, as well as Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.
War and Israeli military occupation
Israel captured the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War. According to the Israeli census that year, Gaza's population was 394,000, of whom at least 60 percent were refugees.
After the Egyptians left, many workers took jobs in agriculture, construction, and service industries inside Israel, which they could easily access at the time. Israeli troops remained to administer the area and protect the settlements that Israel built over the following decades. These became a source of growing Palestinian anger.
First Palestinian rebellion
Twenty years after the 1967 war, the Palestinians launched their first intifada, or rebellion. It began in December 1987 after a traffic accident in which an Israeli truck collided with a vehicle carrying Palestinian workers in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp, killing four people. This was followed by stone pelting protests, strikes and bandhs.
Sensing the anger, the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood created an armed Palestinian branch, Hamas, with its power base in Gaza. Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of Israel, became a rival to Yasser Arafat's secular Fatah party, which led the Palestine Liberation Organization.
oslo agreement
Israel and the Palestinians signed a historic peace agreement in 1993, resulting in the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Under the interim agreement, Palestinians were initially given limited control over Gaza and Jericho in the West Bank. Arafat returned to Gaza after decades in exile.
The Oslo Process gave some autonomy to the newly created Palestinian Authority, and envisaged granting statehood after five years. But this never happened. Israel accused the Palestinians of reneging on security agreements, and the Palestinians were angry at continued Israeli settlement construction.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad carried out bombings in an attempt to derail the peace process, leading Israel to impose further restrictions on the movement of Palestinians from Gaza. Hamas also took up growing Palestinian criticism of corruption, nepotism and economic mismanagement by Arafat's inner circle.
Second Palestinian Intifada
In 2000, Israeli–Palestinian relations reached a new low with the outbreak of the Second Palestinian Intifada. This led to a period of suicide bombings and shooting attacks by Palestinians and Israeli airstrikes, demolitions, no-go zones and curfews.
One casualty was Gaza International Airport, a symbol of failed Palestinian hopes for economic independence and the Palestinians' only direct link to the outside world that was not controlled by Israel or Egypt. Opened in 1998, Israel considered it a security threat and destroyed its radar antenna and runway a few months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Another loss was Gaza's fishing industry, a source of income for thousands of people. Israel reduced Gaza's fishing zone, a ban necessary to stop boats smuggling weapons.
Israel evacuated its settlements
In August 2005, Israel withdrew all its troops and residents from Gaza, which Israel had until then completely closed off from the outside world.
Palestinians dismantle abandoned buildings and infrastructure for scrap. The removal of settlements led to greater freedom of movement within Gaza, and the “tunnel economy” boomed as armed groups, smugglers and entrepreneurs increasingly dug many tunnels into Egypt.
But the move also removed factories, greenhouses and workshops that employed some Gazans.
Isolation under Hamas
In 2006, Hamas won a surprise victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections and then seized full control of Gaza by ousting forces loyal to Arafat's successor, President Mahmoud Abbas.
Most of the international community cut aid to Palestinians in Hamas-controlled areas because they considered Hamas a terrorist organization.
Israel blocked thousands of Palestinian workers from entering the country, cutting off an important source of income. Israeli air strikes destroy Gaza's only electrical power plant, causing massive blackouts. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt also imposed tight restrictions on the movement of people and goods through the Gaza crossing.
Hamas plans to concentrate Gaza's economy to the east away from Israel, which was established even before they began. Seeing Hamas as a threat, Egypt's military-backed leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who took power in 2014, closed the border with Gaza and blew up most of the tunnels. Gaza's economy turned upside down due to isolation once again.
conflict cycle
Gaza's economy has repeatedly suffered losses due to the cycle of conflict, attacks and reprisals between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups.
The most fierce fighting before 2023 occurred in 2014, when Hamas and other groups fired rockets at major cities in Israel. Israel launched airstrikes and artillery bombardments, devastating Gaza and killing more than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Israel has given its death toll as 67 soldiers and six civilians.
2023 attack
Israel was led to believe that it was controlling a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to workers, with the group's fighters being secretly trained and drilled.
On October 7, Hamas gunmen launched an attack on Israel, razing towns, killing hundreds and taking dozens of hostages back to Gaza. Israel retaliated, launching airstrikes on Gaza and destroying entire districts in the worst bloodshed in the 75-year conflict.
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