A brief history of Gaza

Palestine, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire for almost four centuries, was captured by the British in 1917 during World War I. That year, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which vaguely pledged support for a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine. After the war, Palestine was administered by Britain, and Zionist immigration, which had begun in the late 19th century, increased. Tensions between Jewish and Arab residents rose and in 1936 the Arabs revolted. By 1939 their rebellion had been suppressed, but Britain took the problem to the United Nations, which voted to divide the country. Britain soon withdrew. The state of Israel was founded in 1948.

Five Arab countries immediately invaded, and Israel was victorious in the nine-month war that followed. About 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were uprooted. Many ended up in the two areas of land controlled by the Arabs: Gaza, controlled by Egypt, and the West Bank, controlled by Jordan. Conditions in Gaza were appalling: many people slept in barracks, schools and mosques. Refugees in the strip were not allowed to enter Egypt or return to Israel. They were imprisoned and stateless.

In 1967, during a six-day war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank. Life in Gaza improved little under the Israeli occupation. By the mid-1980s, about 250,000 Palestinians, 10% of the population of the occupied territories, had been detained or interrogated, says Ian Black in ‘Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017’. settlements in Gaza, angering Arab residents. In 1987, Palestinians rose up in what became known as the first intifada, or “shaking off,” a sustained movement of violent protests that lasted for years.

In 1993, Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo Peace Accords, a five-year interim agreement intended to give the Palestinian people the right to self-determination. The Palestinian Authority (PA), a new entity, took limited control of Gaza and the West Bank, although the Israeli occupation continued. Negotiators could not agree on the thorniest issues, such as settlement expansion and who would control Jerusalem, and Hamas, which emerged during the Intifada, began a campaign of suicide bombings to oppose the accords. The peace process failed. In 2000, Palestinians rose again during the second Intifada.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, partly because it was so expensive to hold it. A year later, Hamas won a majority in Palestinian elections and formed a unity government with Fatah, its political rival. In June 2007, after a brief civil war, the militants took exclusive control of Gaza, leaving Fatah in charge of the PA in the West Bank. In response, Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the coastal strip, strangling the economy. Although the Israeli government has issued thousands of work permits in recent years, allowing Palestinians in Gaza to cross the border to earn a living, conditions in the Gaza Strip have improved little. In 2022, the unemployment rate was 47%, and 70% for young people; Eight-hour blackouts are a daily occurrence.

In addition to the blockade, people in Gaza have suffered the consequences of four wars waged by Hamas and Israel. Between 2008 and 2023, these conflicts and several other outbreaks of violence in Gaza killed 5,360 Palestinians and injured 63,000. The latest conflict promises even more misery. Israel has placed the Gaza Strip under ‘complete siege’, restricting access to fuel, electricity and food. A ground invasion seems imminent. Gaza’s civilians have already suffered a lot, but the worst may be yet to come.