<\/p>\n
Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lies on ancient trading and maritime routes along the Mediterranean shore. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by over two million Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the major milestones in its recent history.<\/p>\n
As British colonial rule came to an end in Palestine in the late 1940s, violence intensified between Jews and Arabs, culminating in war between the newly created state of Israel and its Arab neighbours in May 1948.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of Palestinians took refuge in Gaza after fleeing or being driven from their homes. The invading Egyptian army had seized a narrow coastal strip 40km long, which ran from the Sinai to just south of Ashkelon. The influx of refugees saw Gaza\u2019s population triple to around 200,000.<\/p>\n Egypt held the Gaza Strip for two decades under a military governor, allowing Palestinians to work and study in Egypt. Armed Palestinian \u201cfedayeen\u201d, many of them refugees, mounted attacks on Israel, drawing reprisals.<\/p>\n The United Nations set up a refugee agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which today provides services for 1.6 million registered Palestine refugees in Gaza, as well as for Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.<\/p>\n Israel captured the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war. An Israeli census that year put Gaza\u2019s population at 394,000, at least 60 per cent of them refugees.<\/p>\n With the Egyptians gone, many Gazan workers took jobs in the agriculture, construction and services industries inside Israel, to which they could gain easy access at that time. Israeli troops remained to administer the territory and to guard the settlements that Israel built in the following decades. These became a source of growing Palestinian resentment.<\/p>\n Twenty years after the 1967 war, Palestinians launched<\/a> their first intifada or uprising. It began in December 1987 after a traffic accident in which an Israeli truck crashed into a vehicle carrying Palestinian workers in Gaza\u2019s Jabalya refugee camp, killing four. Stone-throwing protests, strikes and shutdowns followed.<\/p>\n Seizing the angry mood, the Muslim Brotherhood created an armed Palestinian branch, Hamas<\/a>, with its power base in Gaza. Hamas became a rival to Yasser Arafat\u2019s secular Fatah party that led the Palestine Liberation Organisation.<\/p>\n Israel and the Palestinians signed an historic peace accord in 1993 that led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Under the interim deal, Palestinians were first given limited control in Gaza, and Jericho in the West Bank. Arafat returned to Gaza after decades in exile.<\/p>\n The Oslo process gave the newly created Palestinian Authority some autonomy and envisaged statehood after five years. But that never happened. Israel accused the Palestinians of reneging on security agreements, and Palestinians were angered by continued Israeli settlement building.<\/p>\n Hamas and Islamic Jihad carried out bombings to try to derail the peace process, leading Israel to impose more restrictions on the movement of Palestinians out of Gaza. Hamas also picked up on growing Palestinian criticisms of corruption, nepotism and economic mismanagement by Arafat\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n In 2000, Israeli-Palestinian relations sank to a new low with the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada<\/a>. It ushered in a period of suicide bombings and shooting attacks by Palestinians, and Israeli air strikes, demolitions, no-go zones and curfews.<\/p>\n One casualty was Gaza International Airport, a symbol of thwarted Palestinian hopes for economic independence and the Palestinians\u2019 only direct link to the outside world that was not controlled by Israel or Egypt. Opened in 1998, Israel deemed it a security threat and destroyed its radar antenna and runway a few months after the September 11, 2001 attacks<\/a> on the United States.<\/p>\n Another casualty was Gaza\u2019s fishing industry, a source of income for tens of thousands. Gaza\u2019s fishing zone was reduced by Israel, a restriction it said was necessary to stop boats smuggling weapons.<\/p>\n In August 2005 Israel evacuated<\/a> all its troops and settlers from Gaza, which was by then completely fenced off from the outside world by Israel.<\/p>\n Palestinians tore down the abandoned buildings and infrastructure for scrap. The settlements\u2019 removal led to greater freedom of movement within Gaza, and a \u201ctunnel economy\u201d boomed as armed groups, smugglers and entrepreneurs quickly dug scores of tunnels into Egypt.<\/p>\n But the pullout also removed settlement factories, greenhouses and workshops that had employed some Gazans.<\/p>\n In 2006, Hamas scored a surprise victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections and then seized full control of Gaza, overthrowing forces loyal to Arafat\u2019s successor, President Mahmoud Abbas.<\/p>\n Much of the international community cut aid to the Palestinians in Hamas-controlled areas because they regarded the group as a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n Israel stopped tens of thousands of Palestinian workers from entering the country, cutting off an important source of income. Israeli air strikes crippled Gaza\u2019s only electrical power plant, causing widespread blackouts. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt also imposed tighter restrictions on the movement of people and goods through the Gaza crossings.<\/p>\n Ambitious Hamas plans to refocus Gaza\u2019s economy east, away from Israel, foundered before they even started.<\/p>\n Viewing Hamas as a threat, Egypt\u2019s military-backed leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who took power in 2014, closed the border<\/a> with Gaza and blew up most of the tunnels. Once again isolated, Gaza\u2019s economy went into reverse.<\/p>\n Gaza\u2019s economy has suffered repeatedly in the cycle of conflict<\/a>, attack and retaliation between Israel and Palestinian fighters.<\/p>\n Before 2023, some of the worst fighting was in 2014, when Hamas and other groups launched rockets at heartland cities in Israel. Israel carried out air strikes and artillery bombardment that devastated neighbourhoods in Gaza. More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians. Israel put the number of its dead at 67 soldiers and six civilians.<\/p>\n While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group\u2019s fighters were being trained and drilled in secret.<\/p>\n1950s and 1960s \u2014 Egyptian military rule<\/h2>\n
1967 \u2014 War and Israeli military occupation<\/h2>\n
1987 \u2014 First Palestinian uprising. Hamas formed<\/h2>\n
1993 \u2014 The Oslo Accords, and Palestinian semi-autonomy<\/h2>\n
2000 \u2014 Second Palestinian intifada<\/h2>\n
2005 \u2014 Israel evacuates its Gaza settlements<\/h2>\n
2006 \u2014 Isolation under Hamas<\/h2>\n
Conflict cycle<\/h2>\n
2023 \u2014 Surprise attack<\/h2>\n