🏳 Gaza Strip

Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC, Gaza has been dominated by many different peoples and empires throughout its history and was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in the early 16th century.

Ottoman and British authorities fixed the international boundary between Ottoman Palestine and British-controlled Egypt. This line later became the southern border of the Gaza Strip and has remained essentially unchanged.

Gaza fell to British forces during the First World War, becoming part of the British Mandate of Palestine.

After occupying the area in 1917–18 and Egypt's refusal to take on governance, Britain administered the Gaza area under the internationally accepted Mandatory Palestine framework. Villages along the Gaza coastal plain expanded significantly, with demographic increase and intensified agriculture.

Sections of Palestine Railways crossed the Gaza Strip during the Mandate period, connecting it with Egypt. The link did not survive the territory's post-1948 partition and isolation.

Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip.

Tens of thousands of refugees arrived in the Strip during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. By the war's end 25% of Mandatory Palestine's Arab population was crowded into Gaza, which comprised only 1% of the land, permanently defining Gaza's refugee-majority demography.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was created to run relief, health and education programmes. From the end of 1949 Gaza's refugees received aid directly from UNRWA, which became the territory's principal service provider.

On 22 September 1948 the Arab League proclaimed the All-Palestine Government in Egyptian-occupied Gaza City, partly to limit Transjordan's influence over Palestine. Six of the League's seven members recognised it, but it was widely regarded as a façade for Egyptian control with negligible independent funding.

The agreement of 24 February 1949 established the line of separation between Egyptian and Israeli forces, creating the modern Gaza–Israel boundary. Both signatories declared it not to be an international border, leaving Gaza's final status unresolved.

Israeli forces attacked Egyptian and Palestinian units at Khan Yunis on 3 November 1956, breaking through fortified lines and allegedly massacring civilians; UNRWA reported 275 killed. Israel killed a further 111 at Rafah refugee camp on 12 November, and ended the four-month occupation in March 1957 under international pressure, with 900–1,231 deaths overall.

Having moved to Cairo, the All-Palestine government was abolished by decree of the Egyptian president. Egypt thereafter administered Gaza directly through a military governor without annexing it, until 1967.

Egypt never annexed the Strip but ruled it through a military governor. The influx of over 200,000 refugees combined with Egyptian restrictions on movement, which blocked residents from seeking work elsewhere, caused a dramatic fall in living standards.

Roughly 75,000 Gazans described by Golda Meir as a 'fifth column' were evicted, and at least 25,000 were prevented from returning after the war. The Strip lost at least a quarter of its pre-war population.

After the Six-Day War Israel created Gush Katif, on the site of a short-lived 1946–48 kibbutz. Between 1967 and 2005 Israel built 21 settlements covering 20% of Gaza's territory.

Growth was driven largely by wages from work inside Israel, which gained a large unskilled and semi-skilled workforce. Meanwhile a third of the Strip was appropriated, citrus cultivation declined under planting bans and discriminatory taxation, and export quotas forced many farmers out of agriculture — a pattern Sara Roy called structural de-development.

The Gaza Strip was captured by Israel from Egypt in the Six-Day War of June 1967, beginning an occupation that reshaped the territory's politics and economy. Under Southern Command head Ariel Sharon, dozens of suspected resistance members were executed without trial.

Sharon divided Gaza into five zones with military areas and settlements, fragmenting Palestinian areas to enable efficient control and settlement. Thousands of homes were bulldozed and many Bedouin families exiled to the Sinai.

The treaty of 26 March 1979 provided for Israeli withdrawal from the demilitarised Sinai and Egypt's renunciation of territorial claims north of the international border. Gaza's final status was left undealt with and the Strip remained under Israeli military administration; the treaty also led to the 100-metre-wide Philadelphi Route buffer zone along the 11 km Gaza–Egypt border.

The uprising began on 9 December 1987 in Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli army truck killed four Palestinian workers, and spread as protests, stone-throwing, strikes, boycotts and tax refusal. It lasted until the 1991 Madrid Conference, or by some dating until the 1993 Oslo Accords, transforming Palestinian political mobilisation.

Fertility peaked at 8.3 children per woman in 1991, falling to 4.4 by 2013 but remaining among the world's highest. The resulting age structure left 43.5% of the population aged 14 or under with a median age of 18 in 2014.

Israel constructed a barrier around the Strip to improve its own security. It was largely torn down by Palestinians at the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000 and reconstructed between December 2000 and June 2001; a Gaza–Egypt border barrier followed from 2004.

Under the Oslo Accords a phased transfer of authority brought most of the Gaza Strip under Palestinian Authority control from May 1994, except settlement blocs and military areas, with Israeli forces leaving Gaza City and other urban areas; Yasser Arafat's PA chose Gaza City as its first provincial headquarters. Through a series of agreements signed between 1994 and 1999 — including a second agreement in September 1995 that extended the PA to most West Bank towns — Israel transferred security and civilian responsibility for many Palestinian-populated areas of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Permitted under the Oslo II Accord and Wye River Memorandum, Gaza's only airport opened in November 1998, giving the territory an independent air link. It was closed after Israeli action in October 2000, its radar and control tower destroyed in 2001 and its runway razed in January 2002.

Violence erupted after the collapse of the July 2000 Camp David Summit and Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa compound. It introduced sustained rocket attacks and bombings from Gaza by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and left roughly 3,000 Palestinians, 1,000 Israelis and 64 foreigners dead.

In early 2003 the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia presented a roadmap to a final peace settlement by 2005, calling for two states - Israel and a democratic Palestine.

Following Yasir Arafat's death in late 2004, Mahmud Abbas of the Fatah party was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, and Israel and the PA agreed to move the peace process forward.

In 2005 Israel carried out its unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, withdrawing all soldiers and settlers, dismantling its settlements and military facilities, and pulling out of the Philadelphi Route after Egypt agreed to secure its side under the Rafah Agreement, leaving the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. Israel nonetheless continues to control maritime, airspace and other access; a temporary blockade was also imposed, and Sara Roy identified the disengagement as a turning point from dominating Gaza's economy to disabling it.

On 25 January 2006 Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council election, taking 42.9% of the vote and 74 of 132 seats and defeating Fatah, and it took control of the Palestinian Authority government. Israel, the US, the EU, Russia and the UN cut off direct aid when Hamas refused to recognise Israel and renounce violence, producing political disorder, economic stagnation and emigration.

Hamas announced the dissolution of the Gaza government and transferred power to the internationally recognised National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. This ended nearly two decades of Hamas executive, legislative and judicial authority dating from 2007.

On 17 November 2025 the Council passed the US-authored 20-point peace plan, with Russia and China abstaining. Hamas rejected it over international peacekeepers and the absence of self-determination provisions, while the Palestinian Authority and Netanyahu accepted it.

On 24 October 2025 Hamas said it would give up control of the Strip, following the ceasefire that left it in effective control of less than half the territory. The statement paved the way for a transfer of civil authority.

By 9 October 2025 the parties agreed to the plan's first part: a ceasefire, release of all 20 living Israeli hostages within 72 hours, release of around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and IDF withdrawal from 47% of the territory. The plan envisaged demilitarisation, amnesty for disarming Hamas members and temporary technocratic governance under an international commission headed by Trump.

Armed factions outside Hamas assumed control of territory in the southeast, fragmenting governance during the war. From September 2025 the Counter-Terrorism Strike Force led by Husam al-Astal administered the area around Qizan an-Najjar.

At a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu on 5 February 2025 the US president said Washington would take over the Strip, adding the next day that the transfer would follow the war's end and the relocation of Gaza's population. The remarks sparked wide debate over US regional policy.

A ceasefire took effect on 19 January 2025 and lasted until 18 March, when Israel launched a surprise attack. The provisional truce briefly relieved the humanitarian emergency before hostilities resumed.

On 19 July 2024 the court held that occupation depends on whether authority is established and can be exercised, not continuous military presence, and found Israel's sustained abuse of its position unlawful. Judges noted it did not settle whether Gaza specifically remained occupied after 2005.

A vaccination campaign in central Gaza exceeded its targets with local and international support, conducted during humanitarian pauses to reach insecure areas. It demonstrated residual public health capacity amid the war's devastation.

An end-of-2024 estimate put the population at 2.1 million, down 6% on the previous year owing to the Gaza war. It reversed decades of continuous rapid growth in the territory.

Paramilitaries from Gaza attacked Israeli communities and military bases, killing at least 1,300 people and taking at least 236 hostages. Israel declared war on 9 October and imposed a total blockade of electricity, food and fuel, partially relaxed by an aid deal on 19 October.

The war destroyed much of the Strip, forcibly displaced most of the population and produced an ongoing famine; over 60,000 Palestinians were reported killed and more than 148,000 injured. In September 2025 a UN commission of inquiry concluded there were reasonable grounds to find four of the five genocidal acts had been committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza.

From 30 March 2018 to 27 December 2019 weekly protests near the Israel–Gaza barrier demanded the return of refugees and an end to the blockade; 223 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. A UN Human Rights Council commission found in February 2019 that almost all analysed killings and injuries were unlawful and that Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes; Israel rejected the report.

After the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and mass arrests in the West Bank, Hamas rocket fire escalated and Israel began a seven-week operation on 8 July 2014. It was one of the deadliest Israeli–Palestinian confrontations in decades, with thousands killed, the vast majority Gazan Palestinians.

On 5 June 2014 Fatah signed a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, an attempt to end the post-2007 split in Palestinian governance. It was quickly overtaken by the outbreak of the 2014 Gaza War.

Islamic Jihad severed relations with Hamas leaders after Hamas police fatally shot the commander of its military wing. The rupture exposed the limits of Hamas's authority over rival armed groups in Gaza.

Pursuant to the November 2012 ceasefire, Israel announced narrower buffer limits on 25 February 2013, changed the following month to 300 m and 3 nautical miles. These fell far short of the 20 nautical miles allowed by the 1994 Gaza–Jericho Agreement and the 12 of the 2002 Bertini Commitment.

Following the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état, Egyptian forces demolished most of the tunnels used to smuggle food, weapons and other goods into Gaza. This removed a critical lifeline and arms conduit for the blockaded territory.

A period of increased violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in 2012 ended in an Egyptian-brokered truce. The status quo remains, with HAMAS in control of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority governing the West Bank.

After Hosni Mubarak's resignation on 28 May 2011, Egypt opened the Rafah crossing permanently to students, medical patients and foreign passport holders. Access tightened again after the 2013 Egyptian coup and the Rabaa Massacre, when the crossing was closed indefinitely.

In early 2011 the two factions agreed to reunify the Gaza Strip and West Bank, but they have struggled to implement details on governance and security.

Facing international pressure, Egypt partially opened the Rafah crossing and Israel relaxed restrictions following the Gaza flotilla raid, reducing food shortages. UNOCHA assessed in early 2011 that the measures were helpful but insufficient; the ban on exports was not lifted until 2014.

Israel widened the buffer zone to 300 m from the security fence, though UN bodies reported it extended at least 1 km before 2012. By 2012 the zone accounted for 14% of the Strip and 30–55% of its arable land, costing an estimated 75,000 tonnes of produce and US$50.2 million a year.

On 30 January 2008 the court rejected a petition against Israeli restrictions, holding that Israel had not exercised effective control over the Strip since 2005. The ruling underpinned Israel's legal position, contrary to the view of the UN and most international bodies.

On 23 January 2008, after months of weakening the steel reinforcement, Hamas destroyed sections of the Gaza–Egypt wall at Rafah. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans crossed into Egypt for food and supplies, and Hosni Mubarak ordered troops to let them in while checking for weapons.

The oral storytelling tradition central to Palestinian women's culture was recognised by UNESCO. Written versions recorded in Gaza had been published in 1989 in the volume Speak Bird, Speak Again.

Air strikes began on 27 December 2008 after a truce collapsed, with a ground invasion from 3 January 2009; Israel cited over 3,000 rocket attacks in 2008. The 22-day war killed 1,100–1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and destroyed hospitals, water wells, greenhouses and nearly all 10,000 family farms, leaving 50,000 homeless and a million without electricity.

Attempts to form a unity government between Fatah and HAMAS failed, and factional fighting that killed hundreds through 2006–07 culminated in Hamas's seizure of all military and governmental institutions in the Gaza Strip, with the Strip fully under its control by 14 June 2007. Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and dissolved the unity government, splitting Palestinian governance between Gaza and the West Bank; increased violence with Israel in 2007–08 ended in an Egyptian-brokered truce.

Both states closed their border crossings with Gaza following the Hamas takeover, and Egypt maintained a strict blockade to isolate Hamas from Sinai insurgents. The closure turned Gaza's economy into one of chronic need, de-development and donor dependency, with exports falling to 2% of 2007 levels by 2013.