Gaza: Hamas and the blockade

Israel leaves, Hamas takes over

In August 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulled Israel out of Gaza and removed about 8,500 settlersIsraeli settlers removed from Gaza in 2005✕about 8,500, from 21 settlementsAs of August–September 2005Israel also removed four small settlements in the northern West Bank. The last Israeli soldiers left Gaza on 12 September 2005.Source: Wikipedia (summary) — Israeli disengagement from Gaza (2005) from 21 settlements. Israel kept control of Gaza's coast, airspace and border with Israel; Egypt controlled the Rafah crossing. Israel says this ended its occupation of Gaza; the UN says that level of control meant the occupation continued.

In January 2006 HamasHamas✕A Palestinian Islamist movement with an armed wing, founded in 1987. Its 1988 charter called for Israel's destruction and contained antisemitic language; a 2017 document accepted a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines as a 'national consensus', but still did not recognise Israel and called for the liberation of all of Palestine. It won the 2006 election and took control of Gaza in 2007; since the 2025 ceasefire it still controls the parts of Gaza not held by Israeli troops. The US, the EU, the UK, Canada and others list it as a terrorist organisation.Its supporters: a resistance movement against occupation, and a political party that won an election.Israel and its allies: a terrorist organisation whose aim is to destroy Israel, as 7 October showed.All words explained → won the Palestinian election, helped by anger at corruption in FatahFatah✕The largest party in the PLO, founded by Yasser Arafat. It leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. It is secular and supports a negotiated two-state solution, and is Hamas's main rival.All words explained →, Arafat's party. Israel, the US and the EU refused to deal with a Hamas government unless it recognised Israel and gave up violence; Hamas refused. In June 2007, after fighting between the two parties, Hamas seized Gaza — to stop a US-backed Fatah coup, it said; Fatah called it a coup by Hamas. Palestinians have been divided ever since.

The blockade and the wars

Israel and Egypt then imposed a tight blockadeBlockade✕The tight limits Israel and Egypt placed on people and goods going in and out of Gaza from 2007, after Hamas took power.Israel: a necessary security measure to stop Hamas from getting weapons.Palestinians and UN officials: collective punishment of two million people, which turned Gaza into an 'open-air prison'.All words explained →. Israel limited what goods could enter and who could leave — to keep weapons from Hamas, it said; the Red Cross called it collective punishment. Before the latest war, almost half of Gaza's workers had no job and most people depended on aid. Hamas dug tunnels to smuggle goods and weapons from Egypt, and to fight.

Rocket fire from Gaza began in 2001 and rose sharply after Israel left. Hamas and other groups fired thousands of rockets at Israeli towns, and Israel carried out raids and air strikes. Again and again this became war: in 2008–09, about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed; in 2014, about 2,250 Palestinians and 73 Israelis. In 2018–19 Israeli soldiers killed more than 200 Palestinians at mass protests along the fence; Israel said Hamas used the protests as cover for attacks.

Two views

Who is responsible for Gaza's suffering before 2023?

Many Palestinians say

Gaza was an "open-air prison". Israel decided what and who could enter or leave, punished two million people for the actions of Hamas, and bombed them again and again. Most Gazans are refugees from 1948 whose families' villages lie a few kilometres away.

Many Israelis say

Israel left Gaza completely in 2005, hoping it could thrive. Instead Hamas took over, fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, and spent money on tunnels and weapons instead of on its people. The blockade was a response to Hamas, not the cause.

These are widely held views, not the views of every Israeli or every Palestinian. Both societies argue about these questions among themselves.

"Managing" the conflict

Peace talks collapsed in 2014. Israeli governments, mostly led by Benjamin Netanyahu, tried to keep Gaza quiet with work permits and Qatari money, while the Palestinian Authority grew weaker. In 2020 four Arab states agreed to normal relations with Israel, and in 2023 Saudi Arabia was in talks to do the same. Israeli intelligence believed Hamas did not want a big war. It was a catastrophic mistake.

Go deeper · optionalMore: Gilad Shalit, the other wars, and the years before 7 October▾

Gilad Shalit. In June 2006, militants from Gaza captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. He was held for five years and then exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners — one of them was Yahya Sinwar, who later planned the attack of 7 October 2023.

More wars and protests. Shorter wars in 2012 and 2021 killed about 170 and 260 Palestinians, and 6 and 13 people in Israel. From 2011, Israel's Iron Dome system shot down most rockets aimed at its cities; people in Sderot, near Gaza, had 15 seconds to reach a shelter. About the protests of 2018–19, the "Great March of Return", a UN inquiry found that in almost all the cases it examined, the people shot were not an imminent threat.

The Abraham Accords. The four states that agreed to normal relations with Israel in 2020 were the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, in deals brokered by the United States. Palestinian leaders called them a betrayal.

Life under the blockade. For years Israel also blocked many ordinary goods and almost all exports, and limited how far Gaza's fishermen could sail. In 2022 the UN reported that more than 60% of people needed food aid and the electricity was off for about 11 hours a day.

The West Bank and Israel, 2022–23. At the end of 2022, the most right-wing government in Israel's history took office, including far-right settler leaders. Its plan to overhaul the courts, which critics said would weaken them, brought mass protests. In the West Bank, 2022 and 2023 were the deadliest years for Palestinians since the UN began counting in 2005, with frequent army raids and settler attacks such as the one on the town of Huwara; Palestinian attacks killed dozens of Israelis. Visits by Israeli ministers to the Al-Aqsa compound raised tensions.