Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The history of Gaza is one of conflict and conquest that stretches back millennia. The 363 sq km strip of land changed hands between empires over many centuries, before becoming one of two Palestinian territories under Israeli occupation in the modern era.
Now, as Israeli forces pound Gaza with air strikes and prepare an expected ground invasion in response to the mass killings by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Mediterranean enclave’s story is being violently rewritten again.
A battleground since antiquity
Outsiders have fought for supremacy in Gaza since ancient times. Many coveted its strategic position and status as a trading hub on the coastal route linking Egypt to the wider Middle East.
Historical combatants have included the pharaohs, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Fatimids, Mamluks and crusaders, according to French professor Jean-Pierre Filiu’s book Gaza: A History.
A blockaded enclave
Modern Gaza’s story has been one of a young, rapidly growing population despite the harsh conditions. The number of people living in the territory swelled rapidly from the late 1940s due to an increase in refugees who fled or were expelled from Mandatory Palestine.
By 1970 Gaza had 340,000 residents, rising to 1mn by 1997 before hitting more than 2mn in 2022, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, estimates that more than 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s population are refugees.
More than half the population live in poverty and youth unemployment stands at almost 80 per cent, the UN said last year. The aid-dependent economy has some small-scale industries such as textiles, while agriculture has suffered from water shortages.
The Gaza Strip’s railway is a microcosm of the way its prospects have contracted. It was once possible to travel by train from Gaza City to Tel Aviv, a route used by some Palestinian workers. But the service stopped in the 1970s and the line is now abandoned, a symbol of how the economy has withered through conflict, occupation and a blockade by Israel and Egypt.
A glimpse of greater autonomy
Gaza briefly saw a prospect of greater self-determination in the years after the first intifada, or uprising, against Israeli military occupation that erupted in 1987. The Oslo accords of 1993 created an elected Palestinian authority and a follow-up agreement committed Israel to withdrawing from much of Gaza.
Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli prime minister at the time, highlighted the sense in which the plight of Gaza and its people had turned the once-coveted land into a burden. “Try to give it back to the Egyptians and they will say, ‘You are stuck with it’,” Rabin said in 1992. “I wish the Gaza Strip would sink into the water, but I cannot find for it such a solution,” he added.
The peace process provisions sparked political disputes among Palestinians and Israelis. Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli rightwing extremist in 1995. After a second intifada erupted in 2000, then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon announced plans in 2003 to withdraw troops and settlements from Gaza. That happened in 2005, although Israel maintained patrols of the territory’s frontiers and airspace.
The Hamas era
The Hamas victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections — almost 20 years after the Islamist militant group was founded — proved to be an epochal moment. It sparked an internal Palestinian conflict with rival faction Fatah, culminating in Hamas seizing control of Gaza in 2007.
Israel and Egypt responded by imposing even tighter curbs on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza. That squeezed the territory’s economy and employment opportunities even harder. Almost four-fifths of residents rely on humanitarian aid, the UN said last year.
Hamas has launched rocket barrages against Israel during its time in power, triggering Israeli retaliation. The number of attacks has ebbed and flowed with the level of political tensions, but the average frequency has increased over time, according to data from Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis and the Meir Amit Terrorism and Information Center.
The assaults peaked at an average of more than 11 rockets a day during a previous war in 2014. Israel launched air strikes and a military ground operation in the strip after the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank. Israel has also previously launched offensives against Hamas in Gaza in 2008-2009 and 2021.
A deadly crisis
More than 1,400 Israelis died in the Hamas-led attack on October 7 and more than 200 people were taken hostage, according to the Israeli military. It marked the bloodiest day in Israel’s history.
The loss of life in Gaza following Israeli retaliatory strikes is the worst in any conflict since Hamas took over the territory. The death toll has reached more than 7,000, according to Palestinian health officials in the Hamas-controlled enclave.
On October 18, the Palestinian health ministry said 70 per cent of the 3,478 war deaths recorded over the previous fortnight were children, women and the elderly. Israel has ordered residents to leave Gaza’s north and move to the strip’s south after accusing Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields, which the militant group denies.
Between September 2000 and September 2023, 7,782 conflict deaths in the Gaza Strip were recorded by B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based non-profit organisation. Of these, 2,947 (34 per cent) were people involved in hostilities with Israel and 6,784 (87 per cent) were men.
As the Israeli bombardment and preparations for a ground invasion escalate, a humanitarian crisis is growing in Gaza. Israel has severely curtailed supplies of electricity, water and food to the territory.
Once again, on a narrow strip of land scarred by a long history of struggle, the human suffering is vast.