A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GAZA STRIP

The events preceding October 7, 2023.

Irfan’s study of Gaza since 1948—the year Israel was established, “displacing the majority of the Palestinian population”—argues that several “critical episodes” can inform our understanding of the catastrophic 2020s. “To explain is not to excuse,” writes Irfan, a lecturer in interdisciplinary race, gender, and postcolonial studies at University College London who focuses on Palestinian refugee rights. Her account of wars, rebellions, atrocities, and short-lived governments highlights often-overlooked background to the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza, which followed Hamas’ 2023 deadly attacks on Israel. Much of the writing in this well-documented book is followed by endnotes pointing to Irfan’s sources. The “infamous population density” of the Gaza Strip, often cited in media reports on civilian deaths, took shape when 80,000 people living on the 141-square-mile piece of land saw their number more than triple with the arrival of 200,000 Palestinian refugees in the two years after Israel’s founding. While images of Palestinian boys throwing rocks at Israeli tanks “became an icon of the conflict’s asymmetry,” there were periods of relative openness and hope, Irfan reminds us. Malcolm X and other midcentury activists visited Gaza, and in 1998 President Bill Clinton landed at Gaza’s new international airport, which was destroyed in 2002 by Israeli airstrikes launched during the second Palestinian intifada. The author doesn’t seek false equivalents. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups—so-called fedayeen, “the ones who sacrifice themselves”—have oppressed their own people, rallied around antisemitic lies, and murdered many unarmed Israeli civilians long before 2023. And for decades, Israel has used “collective punishment” and “disproportionate retaliation” in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Gazans since 2023 and nearly halving the life expectancy of the area’s residents. Readers seeking context to the awful headlines from the region should seek out this thought-provoking book.

Robust research underpins this judicious record of Palestinian life.