1906: A line is drawn between Egypt, ruled de facto by Britain, and the rest of the Ottoman Empire. Its northern part delimited the present-day Gaza Strip from the southwest.
1919: The British ruling Mandatory Palestine adopt the 1906 line as the boundary separating Egypt and their mandatory territory, including the Gaza area.
1947: The UN partition plan allocates the area of Gaza to a future Arab state.
1949: The armistice agreements ending Israel’s War of Independence determine the modern-day Gaza Strip as a miliary occupied area under Egyptian control.
1950: Minor land swaps between Israel and Egypt in the Gaza Strip form its current configuration.
1956: The Gaza Strip is occupied by the Israeli military for a few months during a military conflict.
1967: Israel occupies the Gaza Strip as part of the Six-Day War.
1967-2005: Israel establishes settlements in the Gaza Strip, where Israelis reside until the 2005 disengagement.
1994: The newly established Palestinian Authority receives civil control of most of the Gaza Strip.
Early 2000s: Terror organizations in the Gaza Strip begin shooting Qassam rockets at Israel’s south.
2005: Israel disengages completely from the Gaza Strip, withdrawing all Jewish residents and security forces, leaving Gaza under Palestinian control.
2006: Hamas wins the elections in Gaza. It continues to shoot rockets at southern Israeli towns, and also carries out cross-border raids. In one of these, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is kidnapped by Palestinian terror organizations, including Hamas. He is only released from Gaza in 2011 in exchange for 1,000 terrorists held in Israeli jails.
2007: In June, Hamas kills 161 members of rival party Fatah, and imprisons or expels other members of the party in an armed coup, taking over full control of the strip.
2008: Israel launches Operation Cast Lead after Gazans fire dozens of Qassam rockets at southern towns. It ends in a ceasefire after 22 days.
2014: The IDF’s Operation Protective Edge, a seven-week conflict, once again aims to stop constant rocket fire from Gaza.
2023: Hamas terrorists attack Israeli communities and army bases in southern Israel, killing 1,145 people and kidnapping more than 250 people, injuring thousands and destroying farms and homes.
2024: In the war triggered by the Hamas massacre, more than 1,500 Israeli civilians have been killed along with hundreds of soldiers. Approximately 120 people remain captive in the Gaza Strip. More than 100,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes in Israel’s north and south. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza reports that 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, while Israeli estimates stand at 14,000 Hamas militants and 16,000 Palestinian civilians.
The war raging between Israel and Hamas, following Hamas’ October 7 massacres and kidnappings in Israeli Gaza border communities, has brought the Gaza Strip to headlines around the world.
But though many people are seeing images of the conflict on their TVs or phones, very few know about the complicated and tumultuous history of this tiny area. Why is this region in conflict, what are the issues, and how did we get here?
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