Suez Company (1858–1997)

• More than 5,700 people in Gaza have been reportedly killed by Israeli airstrikes in two weeks of relentless bombardment – at least 2,000 of whom are children.
• More than 200 more people, including women, children and elderly people, were seized and taken into Gaza.

How has such a tiny strip of land – less than half the size of Berlin – become so critical to the politics of an entire region? Over the past 75 years, the Gaza Strip has frequently been the focal point of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Here are six key moments that led up to the current crisis:

1. 1948: Palestinian dispossession

• By this time, more than 750,000 Palestinians – around three-quarters of the population – had been turned into refugees.
• Their dispossession became known in Arabic as the Nakba (catastrophe).
• The Strip’s famously dense population today can be traced directly to the dispossession of 1948.

2. 1956: First Israeli occupation of Gaza

As Gaza was administered by Egypt after 1948, it became a key battleground in the 1956 Suez crisis. After Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, Britain, France and Israel launched an attack on Egypt. As part of this, Israel occupied Gaza with evidence of plans for long-term occupation.
In the event, due to US intervention, Israel and its allies were defeated and Washington forced Israel to withdraw its troops early in 1957. But this would not be the last time it occupied the Strip.

3. 1967: Israel begins long-term occupation of Gaza and the West Bank

• It captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert from Egypt.
• This began its long-term military occupation of the two parts of Palestine not taken in 1948: the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

4. 1987: First intifada begins

In December 1987, an Israeli army truck crashed into a car in Gaza, killing four Palestinians. The incident sparked the beginning of the first intifada (uprising), which would eventually spread across the whole of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Palestinians in both occupied territories boycotted Israeli goods, refused to pay taxes, and withdrew their labour from Israeli employers. There was also widespread stone-throwing at Israeli army vehicles and soldiers. The intifada shook up longstanding Israeli assumptions that most Palestinians were passive in the face of the occupation, and is credited as a key factor in forcing negotiations in the early 1990s.

5. 1994: Yasser Arafat sets up the Palestinian Authority in Gaza

From 1993-95, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, signed the Oslo Accords, a set of agreements designed to pave the way for a full peace deal. Oslo allowed for limited Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied territories.

• In 1994, Arafat was instrumental in establishing the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza City, from which Israeli forces partially withdrew.
• Read more:
  Inside the Oslo accords: a new podcast series marks 30 years since Israel-Palestine secret peace negotiations

6. 2007: Hamas takes power in Gaza

• Again, the Gaza Strip was at the centre of this.
• In 2006, Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections, taking 44% of the vote.
• Since then, Palestinians in Gaza have faced continual violence, with particularly intensive Israeli bombing campaigns in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

Anne Irfan receives funding from the British Academy