“Before the war, I used to feel that Gaza was my second mother. Its ground was the warm chest I could lay on, and its sky was my dreams… without limits. The sea would wash away my worries. But today I feel it’s an exile, I stopped feeling it’s the city of my dreams.”
—Ahmad El Ruzzi Born 1993 Al Wehda Street, Gaza Monologues, 2010
Gaza: a name that evokes rubble and resilience, despair and defiance, conflict and catastrophe. The crowded strip of land, hemmed in by walls and waters, is both a place and a symbol—its 141 square miles a palimpsest of imperial ambition, displacement, war and genocide. After October 2023, Gaza lies desolate, a haunting expanse where whispers of life are drowned beneath the weight of grief, a graveyard of dreams, echoing the shadows of a forgotten past—a testament to genocide, where hope flickers like a dying ember in the suffocating silence.
The idea of a contemporary “Gaza Strip” came into global consciousness in 1987 with the beginning of the first Intifada, the so-called ‘revolt of the stones,’ that foregrounded Israel’s recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the latter’s recognition of the State of Israel.
For many in the West, it remains a distant, almost mythic place of perpetual violence—a cycle that feels both inevitable and impenetrable. But what if Gaza’s story were not merely one of conflict but a saga stretching back thousands of years, intricately linked to the rise and fall of empires and the shifting sands of geopolitics? This is the audacious project that Jean-Pierre Filiu undertakes in Gaza: A History, now in its second edition. The fact that Gaza: A History has warranted a second edition is telling and apposite. In a region where events move quickly but history moves slowly, Filiu’s work emerges as a crucial intervention. Yet the question remains: Does Gaza: A History manage to pierce through the veil of oversimplified narratives about Gaza, offering a fresh and comprehensive account of its long and tangled history?
Underlining the imperative to re-examine Gaza’s history “in order to open a vista beyond today’s devastation and grief . . .we all stand to gain from a better understanding of the territory’s long and complex history”, writes Filiu.
Taking cognisance of the difficulties and methodological problems in “the act of writing history of Gaza”, Filiu highlights the destruction of local archives in the course of successive occupation and wars. He adds, “In November 2010, I sought to overcome this deficiency about local information by conducting a series of interviews, and I also succeeded in assembling a substantial repertoire of unpublished documents.” Apart from this roadblock, a historian also encounters the constraint of negotiating Hamas’s policy of promulgating an ‘official history”, and “the ability to reinterpret these often tenuous and biased accounts of Gaza’s history” is critical. Thus, Filiu defines his imperative in writing about Gaza’s history. As towards the end he contends,“Peace between Israel and Palestine holds no meaning, no substance, apart from Gaza.”
Of Genocide and the Gazan Impasses
The genocide unfolding since October 2023 has even “surpassed the notion of nakba itself, the great ‘catastrophe’ of 1948, and the extreme violence of the present is perpetuating those same three Gazan impasses”, which Jean-Pierre Filiu sought to analyse more than a decade ago in his first edition. In the afterword of the second edition of the 563-page Gaza: A History, he delineates Gaza’s three interlocking impasses—the Israeli, the humanitarian, and the Palestinian—that form a vicious cycle, trapping Gaza in perpetual crisis. The Israeli impasse is rooted in a paradox. Since the 2005 disengagement, Israel has sought to control Gaza’s threat while isolating it geographically and politically, ensuring it remains severed from the West Bank. “This impasse stems from the refusal to approach Gaza from any perspective other than Israel’s security, ignoring both the political dynamics and the human reality within the enclave itself”, writes Filiu. Thus, by framing its policies as necessary security measures, Israel has constructed a siege that perpetuates instability without claiming responsibility for Gaza’s humanitarian nightmare. This strategy, Filiu suggests, is not merely about managing risk but about maintaining the status quo, ensuring that the Palestinian territories remain divided and weakened, unable to coalesce into a unified entity that might effectively challenge Israeli dominance.
The humanitarian impasse, meanwhile, is Gaza’s open wound—a consequence of the blockade’s iron grip and the international community’s failure to act beyond mere mitigation. Filiu characterises it as “the Western world’s insistence on offering a strictly humanitarian response to a fundamentally political problem.” He argues that while aid flows into Gaza, it is nothing more than a bandage on a festering wound; it sustains life but keeps Gaza ensnared in a cycle of dependency. The blockade, with its stranglehold on infrastructure, economy, and basic necessities, renders Gaza an open-air prison, where the population is left to suffer en masse, a collateral cost of a political standoff. The world watches, hands half-extended, offering sustenance but no solution. Filiu’s critique is sharp, pointing to how this perpetual state of emergency serves as both a tool of control and an indictment of international complicity.
Yet, the Palestinian impasse may be the most tragic of all. Filiu dissects the deep internal rifts within Palestinian politics, as the schism between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank has fractured any hope of a unified front. This division, he contends, is precisely what Israel’s policies have aimed to exploit, ensuring that Palestinian voices remain fragmented and unable to present a cohesive challenge or negotiate from a position of strength. Gaza’s isolation, enforced by Hamas’s militant stance and Fatah’s distant governance, solidifies this disunion, reducing the Palestinian struggle to disparate cries in the wilderness. Filiu’s analysis reveals these impasses not as isolated occurrences but as a carefully orchestrated web that tightens with every missed opportunity for unity, every round of violence, and every international failure to seek a just and viable resolution.
Ephemeral Gaza
Jean-Pierre Filiu is no stranger to the complexities of the Middle East. A professor at Sciences Po, Paris, he has a dual identity as both historian and diplomat—traits that lend his work a rare blend of archival rigour and geopolitical nuance. Having served in French embassies across the Arab world, Filiu’s scholarship is marked by a firsthand understanding of the region’s political dynamics. He is the author of numerous acclaimed works, including The Arab Revolution and Apocalypse in Islam, demonstrating his ability to translate the complexities of Middle Eastern politics and society for a global audience. This dual expertise fortifies his credibility; he navigates the line between academic detachment and personal insight, drawing on an impressive array of historical sources, many of which are often overlooked in mainstream discussions about Gaza. Filiu’s Gaza: A History is ambitious in scope, spanning over three thousand years, yet it remains tightly structured and compellingly told. Divided into chronological chapters, Filiu traces Gaza’s story from its earliest days as a Canaanite city-state to its recent identity as a political and humanitarian flashpoint. Each chapter delves into the phases of Gaza’s history, marked by foreign rule and indigenous resilience: the Pharaohs, the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Romans, and, later, the Byzantine and Islamic empires. Filiu’s commitment to showing Gaza as an enduring crossroads of civilisations—rather than merely a site of modern strife—is one of the book’s most compelling aspects.
In organising the book, Filiu also situates Gaza within the broader context of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, a tactic that allows him to show how its fate has always been tied to the ambitions of larger powers. From the Crusades to the Ottoman period and from the British Mandate to Egyptian control, Filiu meticulously reconstructs the layers of Gaza’s history, demonstrating that its status as a “prison” is not a recent phenomenon but one rooted in centuries of political manoeuvring.
Filiu’s use of sources is rigorous and impressive, pulling from Ottoman records, British archives, and modern scholarship alike. What distinguishes Filiu is his use of Arabic sources—often untranslated and ignored in Western historiography—which gives his narrative depth and authenticity that are lacking in many other accounts. By integrating local voices and perspectives, Filiu offers readers a sense of Gaza not just as a place of tragedy but as a place of lived history where people have struggled, adapted, and survived under different regimes and circumstances. Yet, while this scope is impressive, it also poses challenges: Filiu’s eagerness to cover so much ground occasionally risks glossing over key details, and at times, his swift transitions between eras can feel disorienting.
Interpreting Gaza
At the heart of Filiu’s work is his interpretation of Gaza as a microcosm of broader regional and international power dynamics. He presents a chronological political narrative that overlooks the socioeconomic forces shaping Gaza’s constrained existence. He does not merely recount events; he seeks to uncover the structural forces shaping Gaza’s history. In his telling, Gaza is not just a victim of circumstance but a place where the ambitions of various empires have collided—each leaving its mark and further complicating its fate.
Filiu’s discussion of the British Mandate is particularly incisive. He dissects how British colonial policy set the stage for later conflicts by neglecting Palestinian political representation while accommodating Zionist aspirations. The Mandate period, he argues, was a crucial juncture where the seeds of Gaza’s modern plight were planted. By the time of the 1948 Nakba, Gaza was already in a precarious position, flooded with refugees and left with little autonomy as Egyptian forces moved in. Filiu’s portrayal of this period is one of his most compelling achievements, as he shows how Gaza became, almost overnight, a repository for the displaced, a status that has defined it ever since.
The 1967 Six-Day War, which resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza, marks a critical juncture in Filiu’s narrative. From this point on, the book shifts tone, reflecting the darkening of Gaza’s prospects under a long and brutal occupation. However, Filiu’s treatment of later periods, particularly post-1967 Gaza, is where his analysis shines most. Filiu unearths the policies and practices—settlement construction, economic strangulation, and military incursions—that have shaped Gaza’s contemporary reality. He pulls no punches in criticising these practices but refrains from engaging in polemics. His is a historian’s voice, but one tempered with moral clarity. The Israeli occupation and subsequent disengagement in 2005 are presented as both dramatic turning points and as symptoms of deeper, unresolved tensions. Filiu’s framing of the 2005 Israeli disengagement as a strategic reconfiguration rather than a gesture of goodwill is supported by his meticulous analysis of political rhetoric and military strategy. He argues that this move transformed Gaza from a territory under occupation to a territory under siege—effectively controlling its borders, economy, and access while minimising Israeli responsibility.
Filiu’s interpretation has its critics. Some might argue that his focus on Gaza as a site of imperial manipulation risks reducing Palestinian agency. While Filiu highlights moments of Palestinian resistance and self-determination, these are often framed against external forces and historical inevitabilities. Moreover, there are points where Filiu’s account veers into contentious, particularly when he discusses American policy. While his criticisms are substantiated, they occasionally shift the tone from historical analysis to advocacy, which may polarise some readers.
One of the strengths of Gaza: A History is Filiu’s narrative style, which blends academic rigour with a sense of immediacy. His prose is accessible yet elegant, rendering complex historical episodes into a readable, often gripping narrative. Filiu introduces the reader to the poets, intellectuals, and ordinary people whose stories form the backbone of Gaza’s social and cultural fabric. The reader is not left with a faceless mass; Filiu provides a mosaic of individuals whose resilience and resistance give Gaza its spirit. For example, he brings attention to the cultural revival efforts of Gazan intellectuals during the Egyptian period and later under Israeli occupation, demonstrating that even in extreme hardship, Gaza remains a site of creativity and expression. This refusal to relegate Gazans to mere victims is a vital corrective, asserting the agency of a people who have, for decades, been silenced or spoken for.
Filiu skillfully uses vignettes of everyday Gazan life to punctuate the broader political and historical context, providing a human face to the abstract discussions of borders, occupations, and wars. However, this humanising approach sometimes also risk simplifying the complexities of Gaza’s reality into a narrative of unending victimhood. For some readers, this may evoke a sense of urgency and empathy, but for others, it might come off as manipulative, detracting from the analytical power of his work.
Growing Scholarship
Scholars, through their collective insights, insist on a more complex, empathetic, and historically grounded understanding of Gaza—one that transcends reductionist depictions and urges a rethinking of the enclave’s significance within the larger struggle for Palestinian nationhood and sovereignty. Through historical analysis, economic critique, personal testimony, and media deconstruction, these authors illuminate Gaza’s place in the broader Palestinian narrative and reveal the structural forces that continue to shape its fate.
For instance, Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine (1979) offers a crucial theoretical framework for interpreting Gaza’s role in the Palestinian struggle. Said’s analysis of Palestinian statelessness and exile resonates deeply with Gaza’s contemporary condition as a territory marked by siege and isolation. While not exclusively about Gaza, Said’s insights into the Western role in the Middle East, the colonial legacies that continue to influence the region, and the framing of Palestinian resistance are essential for understanding Gaza’s geopolitical predicament. About, two decades later, Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997) is a crucial text for contextualising Gaza within the broader Palestinian experience where he examines the historical evolution of Palestinian identity, highlighting how colonialism, displacement, and resistance have shaped Palestinian consciousness. While his work is not exclusively focused on Gaza, it provides essential context for understanding the region’s significance in the Palestinian national narrative. Khalidi’s insights emphasise that Gaza’s identity is not isolated but intricately tied to the broader Palestinian quest for nationhood and sovereignty.
In The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development (1995), Sara Roy offers an indispensable look into how the policies of occupation and blockades have systematically dismantled Gaza’s economy. She introduces the concept of “de-development” to describe the intentional obstruction of Gaza’s economic potential, arguing that Israeli policies have not only aimed to control Gaza politically but also to render it economically dependent and vulnerable. Her analysis combines rigorous economic data with political insights, making her work foundational for understanding the socio-economic underpinnings of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. This approach aligns closely with Filiu’s historical focus, emphasising that Gaza’s struggles are rooted in broader geopolitical strategies rather than merely being a byproduct of war.
In Norman Finkelstein’s Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End (2012) delves into the ideological and media-driven aspects of Gaza’s representation, particularly within American discourse, offering a necessary counter-narrative, exposing the biases that shape international perceptions of Gaza. Finkelstein critiques how Gaza’s suffering is often justified or minimised in Western media and political rhetoric. Finkelstein’s approach complements Filiu’s historical narrative by adding an analytical layer that questions how the international community, particularly the United States, perpetuates Gaza’s isolation. His work underscores the power of narrative in shaping global perceptions, offering a vital critique that challenges readers to reconsider the mainstream portrayal of Gaza as merely a territory plagued by internal issues rather than as a victim of broader geopolitical machinations. In Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege (1999), journalist Amira Hass offers an intimate, ground-level view of life in Gaza.
It is quite striking that, given Filiu’s extensive reading of significant works, the bibliography conspicuously omits Amira Hass’s enlightening narrative of her experiences living in Gaza during the 1990s. Her account provides a nuanced perspective that could enrich the understanding of the region’s complexities and its human dimensions, yet it remains unacknowledged in this comprehensive compilation. Hass’s journalistic approach serves as a necessary complement to the academic perspectives provided by Filiu, Khalidi, Roy, and Pappé. While those scholars offer structural and historical insights, Hass’s narrative focuses on the human stories behind the statistics, giving the people under siege a voice. Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) is another critical text that provides essential historical context for Gaza, tracing the origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis back to the 1948 Nakba. Pappé’s controversial argument posits that the displacement of Palestinians was not an unintended consequence of war but a systematic and deliberate campaign by Zionist forces.
A sense of urgency
Yet, Filiu’s work remains a significant contribution to the literature on Gaza. His use of diverse sources, deep historical analysis, and ability to link past events to present circumstances create a comprehensive picture of Gaza’s place in the region. In a media landscape that often reduces Gaza to headlines and statistics, Filiu’s work offers a necessary corrective—a reminder that Gaza’s history is not just one of war but of survival, continuity, and complexity.
Ultimately, Gaza: A History is not just a book but a call to witness. Filiu’s narrative reminds us that Gaza’s story cannot be relegated to the margins of history or viewed through the lens of mere statistics. It is a story that demands empathy and understanding, a recognition that the people of Gaza are more than the collateral damage of history’s wars. The strength of Filiu’s work lies in his ability to transform what could have been an academic exercise into a profoundly humanistic inquiry. His prose, at times poetic and others stark, captures the essential paradox of Gaza—a place where once a resilient hope existed amidst despair. With an unfolding genocide no longer, that is the reality.
Gaza: A History has been widely recognised as an important and ambitious work that seeks to place Gaza’s contemporary plight within an extended historical and geopolitical context. Most readers will agree that Filiu’s work remains a vital and nuanced contribution to understanding the region and one of the most vexed problems of our times.
Filiu leaves us with a sense of urgency. As readers, we are called not just to understand Gaza’s history but to reflect on our own complicity in its present. Gaza: A History is, in many ways, a warning against indifference, a plea for international solidarity that goes beyond hollow rhetoric. Filiu’s work insists that Gaza’s fate is not sealed—that history, as much as it repeats, also offers possibilities for rupture and change.
Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic, essayist and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva
