Gaza

Gaza (Prison, City)
An enclave of Palestine in the south west corner of Israel

Gaza is a narrow, 25-mile-long stretch of Palestinian land located on the eastern Mediterranean coast with Egypt to its west and Israel to its south and east. The territory comprises five districts (North Gaza, Gaza City, Dier Al Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah) with a combined population of 2,215,000 and is controlled by Hamas, which took power in 2007.

The Gaza Strip's border with Israel is about 36 miles long and its border with Egypt is about eight miles. Gaza's 25-mile coastline has been blocked by the Israeli Navy since 2009 and is closed to all maritime traffic.

Described as the world’s largest ‘open-air prison’ with 2.2 million people, 40% of whom are children, densely-populated Gaza has been under a 16-year-long siege mounted by Israel.

Origin

Gaza's Secret Smuggling Tunnels - BLACK MARKET DISPATCHES - Vice News

Early

Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire, before it was occupied by the United Kingdom from 1918 to 1948, Egypt from 1948 to 1967, and then Israel, which in 1993 granted the Palestinian Authority in Gaza limited self-governance through the Oslo Accords. The territory is still considered by the United Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and scholars to be under occupation by Israel.

Hamas takeover

After Hamas' June 2007 takeover, it ousted Fatah-linked officials from government positions, security services, universities, newspapers and strove to enforce law by removing guns from the hands of militias, clans, and criminal groups, and gaining control of supply tunnels. According to Amnesty International, under Hamas, newspapers were closed down and journalists were abducted and beaten. Fatah demonstrations were forbidden or suppressed, as in the case of a large demonstration on the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death, which resulted in the deaths of seven people, after protesters hurled stones at Hamas security forces.

Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, who headed Israel's National Security Council, has argued that after the disengagement and Hamas takeover, the Gaza Strip became a de facto state for all intents and purposes, writing that "It has clear borders, an effective government, an independent foreign policy and an army. These are the exact characteristics of a state", even though Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Drone testing

Gaza's water polluted due to Israeli siege

Israel used Gaza as a testing ground for development of drones.

Water

Israel has been accused of carrying out a "systemic and wilful campaign to deny Palestinians access to clean water" in Gaza.

It has been called "a comprehensive violation of one of the most basic human rights and consists of a two-pronged approach:

"the visible mass destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure;

"reinforced by invisible policies of closure and occupation, siege and confiscation that block the repair of infrastructure.

"Together, these tactics prevent the existence of sustainable Palestinian communities, driving people from their land, their homes, and communities."

Project censored wrote in October 2014 that "In Gaza, 1.7 million Palestinians currently live without clean drinking water. With no perennial streams and low rainfall, Gaza relies on a single aquifer for all of its fresh water" and predicted that it could become unusably contaminated by 2016.

Gas reserves

US and Israeli companies are working with Israeli approval to syphon natural gas from Gaza's territorial waters, even though this is illegal according to international law, says TRNN's Shir Hever

Nafeez Ahmed noted that Gaza has large reserves of natural gas, which no doubt play a part in Arab-Israel matters: "The Israel-Palestine conflict is clearly not all about resources. But in an age of expensive energy, competition to dominate regional fossil fuels are increasingly influencing the critical decisions that can inflame war."

2024 Deterioration

Full article: 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War

Following the 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War, buildings and infrastructure in the Gaza strip became damaged to such an extent that the return is made impossible; with Gazan officials saying mid January 2024 that "more than 50% of housing units in Gaza have been destroyed, left uninhabitable or damaged".

The state of Gaza is furthering the negative view on Israel in the middle east, the outcome of which could be a war in the region. The Mediterranean Man (an Egyptian posting on Telegram) reported on the remarks by Eli Dekel who in an interview on an Israeli radio station in January 2024 pointed out that Egypt has taken steps in preparation of a land war against Israel.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War	“There had already been a significant increase in violence by Israeli settlers this year, even before the Hamas attack, according to UN data, with more than 100 incidents reported each month and about 400 people driven from their land between January and August. Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem told the BBC that since the attack, it had documented "a concerted and organised effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank". Partial data compiled by B'Tselem, covering the first six days after the Hamas attack, recorded at least 46 separate incidents in which it said settlers threatened, physically attacked or damaged the property of Palestinians in the West Bank. "A lot of shepherding families and communities have fled because they were threatened in the past week by settlers," said Roy Yellin, a spokesman for B'Tselem. "Settlers have been giving residents a deadline to leave and telling them if they don't they will be harmed. And some villages have been totally emptied out."”	BBC Joel Gunter	2023
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza	“When I was first asked to work there [at Shifa], I was told there was a part of the hospital I was not to go near, and if I did, I’d be in danger of being shot. No, but implicit was that it was being used for non-medical purposes. I stayed away, but I saw a few dodgy-looking non-medical characters going in and out all the time. It was a ward leading to a basement. As I said, I didn’t go there; so I behaved myself. I was welcome everywhere else, and as I say the doctors and nurses there were very welcoming and very kind and the hushed tones under which this was said was very consistent with all the other hushed tones with which Hamas was discussed. You know people were genuinely fearful. I cannot emphasise too much, the air of collective paranoia that existed there. If hospital staff were 10 per cent frightened of possible Israeli airstrikes, they were 90 per cent frightened of being persecuted by Hamas.’”	Daily Mail Nick Pisa	2023
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza	“UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said after a key Hamas operations center was discovered right beneath his headquarters that he had no idea. That's absurd. There was a very advanced tunnel with electrical cables, which supplied a Hamas server center with power. That came directly from UNRWA's electricity grid. Moreover, a few years ago, UNRWA staff noticed that an entire parking lot above it was starting to subside. So what do you mean, we couldn't have known anything?”	Hillel Neuer	2024
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War/October 7	“Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan. Hamas had "decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope," analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division. But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet. On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing. The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times. The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out. The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off. “In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.”	Ronen Bergman Adam Goldman	2023
Craig Murray	“The International Court of Justice has stated definitively that the Israeli occupation is illegal and it is the duty of states not to support it. Yet in UK law it is perfectly legal to state that you support the IDF and hope that they kill all the Palestinians in Gaza But it is illegal in the UK - and carries 14 years in jail - to express support for named Palestinian organisations engaged, legally in international law, in armed resistance to illegal occupation.”	Craig Murray	20 August 2024
Ronald Plasterk	“All the more exasperating that in the reactions to Hamas's horrific pogrom, in which more Jews were murdered in one day than at any time since the Holocaust, first, it is pretended that it is indeed symmetrical, and the major media such as the NOS news even ostentatiously takes sides with Hamas and against Israel (see, for example, holding Israel directly responsible for that bomb on the hospital, without any check, and then no neat response). You can have all sorts of objections to the Netanyahu government, and because Israel is a democracy (the only one in the Middle East) there are many people even within Israel who voice those objections. You can insist on observing borders when counterattacking. If you recognise Israel's full right to defend itself, there are always limits anyway; remember, for example, that Israel is a nuclear power. But even if you keep the balance right, it is important to have in mind why the situation between Israel and Hamas is anything but symmetrical. There are civilian casualties on both sides. A first fundamental difference is that Hamas, as a terror organisation, is out to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, while the Israeli army is trying to hit Hamas while inflicting as few civilian casualties as possible. You might perhaps think that they should take even more of a margin on that point, but in any case the intention is a completely different one from Hamas’. A further difference is that Israeli soldiers may be willing to die in war, but still prefer to come home to their families in one piece. Hamas has a death culture, with the highest good being to blow yourself up, for which you are rewarded with sex with 72 young virgins (not wondering if those 72 young women feel like it). Then taking civilians hostage as human shields, including very young children. That is a serious war crime, and one would expect that all responses would constantly insist that Hamas must first release those hostages. On top of that, Hamas is also preventing its own civilians from leaving locations where Hamas posts are located, precisely with the intention of those civilians being killed in attacks from Israel. Another criminal tactic that Israel does not use.”	Ronald Plasterk	2023
UNRWA	“UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said after a key Hamas operations center was discovered right beneath his headquarters that he had no idea. That's absurd. There was a very advanced tunnel with electrical cables, which supplied a Hamas server center with power. That came directly from UNRWA's electricity grid. Moreover, a few years ago, UNRWA staff noticed that an entire parking lot above it was starting to subside. So what do you mean, we couldn't have known anything?”	Hillel Neuer	2024

 

Events

Event	Description
2018 Gaza Massacre	A massacre of at least 135 unarmed protestors including many women and children, and the wounding of many thousands more by Israeli IDF sniper teams, during the Palestinian 'Great March of Return' and the weeks following its end on 15 May 2018
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War	Hamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11", while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza	After October 7, Israel invaded Gaza with widespread international support. The IDF went on a widely reported revenge killing spree. Even by Israel's own account, they killed 19,500 Palestinian civilians after half a year of bombing hospitals, schools and civilian towers, utilising numerous condemned tactics.
2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War/October 7	Hamas attacks Israeli settlements in Southern Israel, mass raping and abducting, which get called an Israeli "9-11" by CCM. The NYT and Al Jazeera claimed the Israeli government knew of the impending attack, ignored warnings, shot some of their own civilians, made up several stories and used the resulting increased death toll to go on a revenge killing spree in the 2023 Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Gaza War (2008–09)	Three weeks of assault launched against Gaza by Israel, including the use of white phosphorus, leaving over 1000 people dead and over 5000 injured.
Suez Crisis

 

Group

Group	Start	Description
Hamas	1987	"Terrorists" according to the West, largely founded, financed and brought to power by Israel, Hamas has led Palestine into becoming an enemy image to the western world since 2006.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:700+ media figures and programme-makers condemn BBC’s Gaza documentary censorship	Article	27 February 2025	Editor	"A broadcaster cannot allow bad-faith attacks to dictate its editorial decisions. "Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone" is an important, well-executed documentary that licence-fee payers have the right to watch. The BBC should stand by it with confidence."
Document:Al Quds Day letter to Tony Blair	letter	3 September 2010	Lauren Booth	Lauren Booth writes a scathing open letter to her brother-in-law, Tony Blair...
Document:Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing	blog post	8 March 2024	Jonathan Cook	President Biden needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for. He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Document:British Jewish Zionist MP Gerald Kaufman says Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza	Speech	January 2009	Gerald Kaufman	"However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools."
Document:Ex-Israeli Supreme Court chief Aharon Barak appointed as ICJ judge for genocide case	Article	8 January 2024	The New Arab Staff	Aharon Barak argued that the rules of collateral damage permit the killing of Palestinian fighters even if led to the deaths of children. This was approved by Barak himself in a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, as cited in a report by a Canadian news outlet.
Document:Former Labour leader honoured by Palestinian Forum	Article	19 December 2021	Steve Walker	Jeremy Corbyn receives award for ‘remarkable efforts’ to support Palestinians against oppression
Document:Gaza - is annexation Israel's 'permanent solution'	Article	31 July 2014	Oliver Tickell	The UN Security Council stands supine, knowing that the US will veto any attempt to hold Israel and its military accountable. We are not in the "realm of accountability", but precisely where we have always been as far as Israel's crimes are concerned - in the realm of impunity.
Document:Goliath's Revenge - Israel and Apartheid South Africa	Article	5 January 2024	Christopher Nicholson	"During the apartheid years I practised as a human rights lawyer and one of my colleagues defended a young boy, charged with assaulting a police officer. He had thrown a stone at the man, who was on board a tank-like military vehicle, but had arrogantly left his helmet off. A law in force with regard to firearms required a warning shot to be fired in certain circumstances. The prosecutor then demanded of the latter-day David: ‘Why did you not throw a warning stone?’"
Document:How the West hides its Gaza genocide guilt behind Holocaust Day remembrance	Article	31 January 2025	Jonathan Cook	The Holocaust has been turned into a shield that, rather than protecting others from becoming victims of genocide, is used to protect those in the West who wish to perpetrate it.
Document:I saw illegality and complicity with war crimes. That’s why I quit the UK Foreign Office	Article	9 February 2025	Mark Smith	The UK’s closest ally, America, now proposes the mass expulsion of 2.1 million people from Gaza and the demolition of one of the most densely populated civilian areas on Earth – this is ethnic cleansing. It is genocide. The time for silence is over. Do not allow ministers to trade human lives for political expediency. The time for accountability is now.
Document:ICC issues warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant	Statement	21 November 2024	Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC	The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant each bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts; and for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.
Document:In the Holy Land, Just a Couple of Dead Catholics	blog post	25 December 2024	Michael Moore	"One year later I thought we should not forget them. We should offer up to their memory, their souls, our promise that not only will they not be forgotten, we will not give up our fight for their freedom and the freedom of their families. Say their names. Place this photo of them somewhere special."
Document:International justice: the South African complaint against Israel for “genocide” in Gaza	Article	10 January 2024	United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe
Document:Israel’s Ramadan massacre and the West’s hypocrisy	documentary	19 March 2025	David Hearst	"Whoever inherits the wreckage of the Trump era must face one undeniable reality: the West’s claim to moral leadership is gone - permanently."
Document:Jeremy Corbyn leads cross-party push in Parliament for immediate recognition of Palestine	Article	4 September 2024	Joe Connor	Early Day Motion 71 "Calls on HM Government to immediately recognise the state of Palestine in accordance with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of 2024, which recognised that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip constitute a single territorial unit the integrity of which is to be respected."
Document:Jeremy Corbyn says “I Condemn Violence Against All Civilians, Why Can’t Keir Starmer?”	Article	12 October 2023	Jeremy Corbyn	In an interview with LBC, Keir Starmer was asked whether “cutting off power and water” to 2 million people, half of whom are children, was appropriate. He agreed that Israel “has that right”. Where is the empathy for Palestinians who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their futures? What happened to the universal application of international law?
Document:Meeting the Gaze of the Ghost in the Rubble	Article	28 February 2024	George Gunn	Meanwhile the ghost still looks out from the rubble of Gaza. Her stare searches across the ocean of our conscience like the beam of a lighthouse. The ghost in the rubble asks of us all: why can we not stop this madness and feed the people?
Document:New BBC documentary ‘The Road to 7th October’ is an utter travesty	blog post	9 March 2025	Jonathan Cook	BBC's documentary "Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October" breathes life back into a racist western narrative – one that made the genocide in Gaza possible, and justifies Israel’s return this month to using mass starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people.
Document:Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide	Article	26 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	Members of the US Congress roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
Document:Open Letter To The Judges Of The International Criminal Court	Letter	7 October 2024	Yanis Varoufakis Brian Eno
Document:Putting Palestinians on a Diet	article		Unknown	About the Israel blockade of Gaza and the manner in which the Western commercially-controlled media contrive to ignore it.
Document:Starmer’s purges of Labour have mutated into the arrest of Palestine supporters	blog post	30 August 2024	Jonathan Cook	Britain’s authoritarian new prime minister is expanding the scope of already draconian laws to redefine his critics as ‘supporters’ of terrorism. Starmer wants to be judge, jury and executioner. We must not let him get away with it.
Document:The BBC is weaponising its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel's crimes	Article	27 September 2024	Jonathan Cook	By the third week of September, Israel had killed more than 750 Lebanese, compared to 33 Israeli deaths. The differential is even starker now. And yet the western media has not framed Hezbollah’s attacks as its "right to defend itself" – a right we are continuously reminded Israel has.
Document:The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face	Article	30 April 2024	Jonathan Cook	"The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance by Israel and the United States. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making their plan a reality."
Document:The Israeli Terrorist State	blog post	31 July 2024	Craig Murray	"For me it is now axiomatic that there is no two state solution and that apartheid Israel must be completely dismantled as an entity. I believe that more and more people around the entire globe believe that now. "And if we have to dismantle our own political and media classes to get there, so be it."
Document:The Presence of Evil	blog post	25 July 2024	Craig Murray	Netanyahu’s slanderous attacks on the institutions of international law were applauded to the rafters by America’s political leaders. The whole world was watching, and took note. The Zionist project per se is evil. To steal another people’s land and subject them to long and progressive genocide is about as evil a deed as can be imagined.
Document:The arrest of journalist Richard Medhurst and the fight to defend democratic rights	Article	27 August 2024	Robert Stevens	Now, in a move that would have been agreed to by PM Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Labour has pioneered the use of an amendment to the Terrorism Act passed by the Tories to once again attempt to silence and criminalise a journalist and political activist. The same course is being pursued by governments throughout the world.
Document:The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher	blog post	31 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	In July 2024, researchers to The Lancet medical journal very conservatively estimated that the total number of Gazans who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.
Document:The tears of Gaza must be our tears	speech	5 August 2010	Chris Hedges
Document:There's No Auschwitz in Gaza. But It's Still Genocide	Commentary	30 January 2025	Amos Goldberg Daniel Blatman	"What is happening in Gaza is not the Holocaust. There is no Auschwitz and no Treblinka there. However, it is a crime from the same family – a crime of genocide."
Document:Top Secret GCHQ report leaked by Edward Snowden	Article	28 March 2025	Matt Kennard	"We know how the UK and US militaries have used RAF Akrotiri to supply and support the genocide in Gaza. We know nothing about how they have mobilised their spying assets on Cyprus to support the slaughter. This is one for the ICC and ICJ."
Document:We Are The Bad Guys	blog post	12 August 2024	Craig Murray	In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are. But find one and take one.
Document:What is Left for Palestine?	blog post	17 May 2021	Craig Murray	It was a beautiful day in Glasgow yesterday for the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demo, and it was great to be able to meet up again with so many magnificent and public-spirited people. It was an especially young crowd, which was excellent, and I was able to meet many Palestinians who drew comfort from the public support at a traumatic time.
Document:Why I No Longer Stand with Israel, and Never Will Again	Article	15 October 2023	Scott Ritter	"I stand with Palestine, because I stand for the children of Israel and Palestine, knowing full well that the only chance they have of a future where they can live together as neighbours united in peace, instead of enemies united in war, is for a free and independent Palestine to exist." (Scott Ritter)
Document:Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 1	blog post	11 January 2024	Craig Murray	The fact of genocide is incontrovertible and had been plainly set out. But several of the Judges are desperate to find a way to please the USA and Israel and avoid countering the current Zionist narrative, the adoption of which is necessary to keep your feet comfortably under the table of the elite.
Document:Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 2	blog post	14 January 2024	Craig Murray	"These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the Court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza."
File:Attack when the world is not watching.pdf	paper	1 May 2015	Ruben Durante Ekaterina Zhuravskaya	An analysis of the timing of Israeli military attacks on Gaza relative to important breaking news in the US and Europe
File:UN-Gaza-monitor-2010-04.pdf	report	April 2010
Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza	Article	5 March 2024	Ralph Nader	From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

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