Battle of Gaza (2007) in the context of "Fatah"

The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the West Bank) that make up the State of Palestine in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north. Its capital and largest city is Gaza City.

The territorial boundaries were established while Gaza was controlled by the Kingdom of Egypt at the conclusion of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. During that period the All-Palestine Protectorate, also known as All-Palestine, was established with limited recognition and it became a refuge for Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestine war. Later, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip, initiating its decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territories. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a limited governing authority, initially led by the secular party Fatah until that party's electoral defeat in 2006 to the Sunni Islamic Hamas. Hamas would then take over the governance of Gaza in the Battle of Gaza the next year, subsequently warring with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), officially known as the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a consequence of the 1993–1995 Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority controlled the Gaza Strip prior to the Palestinian elections of 2006 and the subsequent Gaza conflict between the Fatah and Hamas parties, when it lost control to Hamas; the PA continues to claim the Gaza Strip, although Hamas exercises de facto control. Since January 2013, following United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19, the Palestinian Authority has used the name "State of Palestine" on official documents, without prejudice to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) role as "representative of the Palestinian people".

The Palestinian Authority was formed on 4 May 1994, pursuant to the Gaza–Jericho Agreement between the PLO and the government of Israel, and was intended to be a five-year interim body. Further negotiations were then meant to take place between the two parties regarding its final status. According to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was designated to have exclusive control over both security-related and civilian issues in Palestinian urban areas (referred to as "Area A") and only civilian control over Palestinian rural areas ("Area B"). The remainder of the territories, including Israeli settlements, the Jordan Valley region and bypass roads between Palestinian communities, were to remain under Israeli control ("Area C"). East Jerusalem was excluded from the Accords. Negotiations with several Israeli governments had resulted in the Authority gaining further control of some areas, but control was then lost in some areas when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retook several strategic positions during the Second ("Al-Aqsa") Intifada. In 2005, after the Second Intifada, Israel withdrew unilaterally from its settlements in the Gaza Strip, thereby expanding Palestinian Authority control to the entire strip while Israel continued to control the crossing points, airspace, and the waters of the Gaza Strip's coast.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (an acronym from the Arabic: حركة المقاومة الإسلامية, romanized: Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah), is a Sunni Islamist Palestinian nationalist political organisation with a military wing known as the al-Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.

The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state. In the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas secured a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council by campaigning on promises of a corruption-free government and advocating for resistance as a means to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation. In the 2007 Battle of Gaza, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from rival Palestinian faction Fatah. It has since governed the territory separately from the Palestinian National Authority, and has been criticized for human rights violations. After Hamas's takeover, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip. Egypt also began its blockade of Gaza at this time. This was followed by multiple wars with Israel, including those in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and an ongoing one since 2023, which began with the October 7 attacks.

Hamas began governing the Gaza Strip in June 2007 when it took over the territory from the rival Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA). The Hamas administration was first led by Ismail Haniyeh from June 2007 until February 2017; then by Yahya Sinwar until his killing in October 2024; then by Mohammed Sinwar until his assassination in May 2025; and since then by Izz al-Din al-Haddad. During the Gaza war (2023–present), the group lost control over most of the Gaza Strip to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and as a result of the Gaza peace plan, agreed in October 2025, the IDF currently controls approximately 53% of the territory. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted on 17 November 2025, contains provisions to effectively place the Gaza Strip under international administration.

After Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections on 25 January 2006, Ismail Haniyeh was nominated as the prime minister of the PA, establishing a national unity government with Fatah. This government effectively collapsed with the outbreak of the violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah. After the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas on 14 June 2007, PA president Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and appointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister. Though the new Palestinian government's authority was claimed to extend to both the Palestinian territories, in effect it became limited to the West Bank, as Hamas did not recognize the dismissal and continued to rule the Gaza Strip as an effectively separate administration from the PA. There have been reconciliation attempts between Fatah and Hamas since the 2007 split; a brief Palestinian unity government in 2014 failed to organize elections and reunify the Palestinian territories. A third government was formed by Hamas in October 2016.

The Israeli permit regime in the Gaza Strip is the legal regime that requires Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to obtain a number of separate permits from the military authorities of Israel, their occupiers from 1967 to 2005.

Israeli work permits allow pass holders to work in Israel or its occupied territories where wages are significantly higher than in Gaza, which has been under a blockade by Israel and Egypt since Islamist militant group Hamas has gained power in the region.

The Gaza–Israel conflict is a localized part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict beginning in 1948, when about 200,000 of the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes settled in the Gaza Strip as refugees. Since then, Israel and Palestinian militant groups have fought 15 wars in the Gaza Strip. The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza war (ongoing since 2023) (70,000+) is higher than the combined death toll of all other wars in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Israel fought three wars in the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip: 1948 Palestine War, the first occupation of Gaza during the Suez Crisis, and the capture of Gaza in 1967. During the first occupation, 1% of Gaza Strip's population was either killed, tortured or imprisoned by Israel. Following two periods of low-level insurgencies, a major conflict between Israelis and Palestinians erupted in the First Intifada. The 1993 Oslo Accords brought a period of calm. But, in 2000 the Second Intifada erupted. Towards the end of the Second Intifada, Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, Hamas won the 2006 election and seized control of Gaza in 2007.

The Gaza peace plan is a multilateral agreement between Israel and Hamas that aims to address the ongoing Gaza war and broader Middle Eastern crisis. Led by United States president Donald Trump, it was negotiated in consultation with many Arab and Muslim countries. The plan was announced by Trump on September 29, 2025, during a press conference at the White House alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was signed on October 9, coming into effect the following day, and was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council on 17 November.

After the 2005 Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip Hamas won elections in 2006 and formed a government, first alone and then in a grand coalition with Fatah, but later seized Gaza in 2007. Since then, repeated clashes with Israel have escalated into major conflicts, culminating in the October 7 attacks by Hamas in 2023, which triggered a large-scale Israeli military campaign and genocide in Gaza. Interim ceasefires in late 2023 and early 2025 collapsed.