Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip in the context of "Administration of the Gaza Strip by Egypt"

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 Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security, water rights, the permit regime in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian freedom of movement, and the Palestinian right of return.

The conflict has its origins in the rise of Zionism in the late 19th century in Europe, a movement which aimed to establish a Jewish state through the colonization of Palestine, synchronously with the first arrival of Jewish settlers to Ottoman Palestine in 1882. The Zionist movement garnered the support of an imperial power in the 1917 Balfour Declaration issued by Britain, which promised to support the creation of a "Jewish homeland" in Palestine. Following British occupation of the formerly Ottoman region during World War I, Mandatory Palestine was established as a British mandate. Increasing Jewish immigration led to tensions between Jews and Arabs, which grew into intercommunal conflict. In 1936, an Arab revolt erupted, demanding independence and an end to British support for Zionism, which was suppressed by the British. Eventually, tensions led to the United Nations adopting a partition plan in 1947, triggering a civil war.

The occupation of the Gaza Strip by the United Arab Republic began in 1959 following the dissolution of the All-Palestine Protectorate, which had ruled the Gaza Strip as a client state of Egypt since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and its merger with the United Arab Republic.

The 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended the Arab–Israeli War by delineating the Green Line as the armistice line between Israel and its four neighboring countries (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt), left the Kingdom of Egypt in control of a small swath of territory that was part of Mandatory Palestine prior to the war. That swath of territory became known as the Gaza Strip. In 1949 Egypt created the client state named the All-Palestine Government which lasted until 1959, the year after the Republic of Egypt and the Second Syrian Republic merged to form a single sovereign state known as the United Arab Republic. The Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip was interrupted for 4 months in late 1956 and early 1957 when Israel briefly occupied the strip as part of the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Egyptian occupation ended entirely during the 1967 Six-Day War, after which the territory became occupied by Israel with the establishment of the Israeli Military Governorate.

The Six-Day War, or the 1967 Arab–Israeli war (5–10 June 1967), was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan within the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict. In the war, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

Military hostilities broke out amid poor relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, who had been observing the 1949 Armistice Agreements signed at the end of the First Arab–Israeli War. In 1956, regional tensions over the Straits of Tiran (giving access to Eilat, a port on the southeast tip of Israel) escalated in what became known as the Suez Crisis, when Israel invaded Egypt over the Egyptian closure of maritime passageways to Israeli shipping, ultimately resulting in the re-opening of the Straits of Tiran to Israel as well as the deployment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) along the Egypt–Israel border.