Gaza
The strip, its people, its record — history, names, voices, law.
113 entries across 16 collections
Research16
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights
Al Mezan
Founded in 1999 and based in Gaza, Al Mezan documents human rights violations in the Gaza Strip, provides legal aid to victims, and advocates for accountability and the rule of law under occupation and blockade.
Amnesty International — Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories
Amnesty International
Amnesty documents human rights violations by Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups and campaigns for justice, accountability, and an end to apartheid.
B'Tselem — The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
B'Tselem
B'Tselem documents human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied territories through field research, video testimony, and policy analysis. Founded in 1989 by Israeli academics, attorneys, and journalists, it publishes reports in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
Defense for Children International — Palestine (DCIP)
DCIP
DCIP documents the detention, killing, and maiming of Palestinian children by Israeli forces and advocates for their rights under international law.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor — Geneva-based documentation of violations in Gaza
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
A youth-led nonprofit founded in 2011 and registered in Switzerland, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documents human rights violations across Europe and the MENA region, with extensive field reporting from the Gaza Strip.
Forensic Architecture — spatial and visual investigations of state violence
Forensic Architecture
A research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, founded in 2010 by architect Eyal Weizman, producing spatial and media investigations of state violence and human rights violations, including a long-running body of work on Palestine.
The Death Toll — the documented count and the undercount debate
FALASTEEN.AI documentation desk
The Gaza Ministry of Health's documented count — more than 72,500 reported killed by late April 2026 — is the floor, not the ceiling: peer-reviewed analyses using independent methods converge on substantial undercounting, while excess-mortality projections run far higher. This entry records what is documented, what is estimated, and by whom.
Human Rights Watch — Israel and Palestine
Human Rights Watch
HRW investigates and reports on human rights conditions in Israel and Palestine, including laws and policies affecting Palestinians under occupation and in Israel.
ICC Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant — Pre-Trial Chamber I, 21 November 2024
ICC
ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I's decisions of 21 November 2024 rejecting Israel's jurisdictional challenges and issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Application Instituting Proceedings — South Africa v. Israel (Genocide Convention, Gaza)
ICJ
South Africa's 84-page application of 29 December 2023 instituting proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, together with a request for provisional measures.
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
PCHR
Based in Gaza, PCHR monitors and documents violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, provides legal aid, and advocates before international bodies.
UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel — 2024 Reports
UN Commission of Inquiry
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry's 2024 reports: the June 2024 report (A/HRC/56/26) on the 7 October 2023 attacks and Israel's military operations in Gaza, and the September 2024 report (A/79/232) on attacks on Gaza's healthcare system, Palestinian detainees, and hostages.
UN OCHA OPT — United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
UN OCHA
OCHA coordinates humanitarian response in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and publishes data dashboards, situation reports, and access maps used by aid agencies and journalists.
UNRWA — UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
UNRWA
Established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) in December 1949, UNRWA provides education, health care, and relief to millions of registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.
We Are Not Numbers — Gaza youth writing project
We Are Not Numbers
Founded in Gaza in 2015, We Are Not Numbers pairs young Palestinian writers with English-language mentors around the world, publishing first-person essays and poems that resist the reduction of Palestinians to casualty statistics.
WHO occupied Palestinian territory — health system support and emergency response
World Health Organization — occupied Palestinian territory
The WHO office for the occupied Palestinian territory supports the Palestinian health system, coordinates the health response to emergencies in Gaza and the West Bank, and publishes situation reports and data on attacks on health care.
Poetry3
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Poet, essayist, and translator whose "Running Orders" carried Gaza's summer of 2014 around the world — and whose later collections made her one of the most honored Palestinian poets writing in English.
Mosab Abu Toha
1992–
A Gaza-born poet and librarian, Abu Toha writes from the everyday experience of siege, family, and the search for normalcy under bombardment.
Refaat Alareer
1979–2023
Professor, editor, and poet of Gaza, Alareer taught a generation of young writers to write back — and left behind a poem asking to be remembered.
Voices3
Francesca Albanese: 'Anatomy of a Genocide' and the Reports of the UN Special Rapporteur
Francesca Albanese
There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been met.
Malcolm X in Gaza and "Zionist Logic"
Malcolm X
Days after walking through the refugee camps of Gaza, Malcolm X set down his analysis of Zionism as a new form of colonialism.
South Africa v. Israel: The Genocide Case at the International Court of Justice
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC
The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.
Figures8
Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi
1947–2004
The pediatrician from Yibna, a refugee at six months old, who was one of the seven founders of Hamas in 1987, spokesman of the Marj al-Zuhur deportees, and was killed by Israeli missiles on 17 April 2004, twenty-six days after succeeding Ahmed Yassin.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
1936–2004
The quadriplegic refugee preacher from al-Jura who founded Hamas in December 1987 and was killed by Israeli helicopter missiles as he left dawn prayers in Gaza on 22 March 2004.
Eyad al-Sarraj
1944–2013
Gaza's first practising psychiatrist, who built mental health care under occupation into a form of human rights work.
Fathi Shaqaqi
1951–1995
The physician from Rafah refugee camp, son of a family expelled from Zarnuqa, who founded the Islamic Jihad Movement and was shot dead by Mossad agents on the island of Malta on 26 October 1995.
Haidar Abdel Shafi
1919–2007
Gaza physician who founded the Red Crescent Society in Gaza and headed the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference.
Intissar al-Wazir (Umm Jihad)
1941–
The Gaza City militant who became Fatah's first woman member in 1959, built the PLO's institutions for the families of martyrs and prisoners, survived her husband Khalil al-Wazir's assassination beside her in Tunis, and returned from thirty years of exile as minister of social affairs.
Razan al-Najjar
1996–2018
A 21-year-old volunteer paramedic from Khan Younis, shot dead by an Israeli sniper while tending to wounded protesters in Gaza in 2018.
Wael al-Dahdouh
1970–
Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, who kept reporting through the killing of his wife, son, daughter, and grandson in 2023 and became a global symbol of press freedom.
Library5
Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom
Norman Finkelstein
Finkelstein's prosecutorial inquest, built from the human rights record, into Israel's repeated assaults on Gaza and the blockade that frames them.
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians
Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé
Chomsky and Pappé survey the fallout of Israel's 2008–09 assault on Gaza and place it in the long context of occupation, siege, and US complicity.
Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation
Edited by Vijay Prashad
American writers respond to the 2014 Gaza war with essays, poems, and open letters — a document of conscience edited by Vijay Prashad.
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories
Ilan Pappé
Pappé's archival history of how Israel's generals and politicians built the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — a 'mega-prison' by design.
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
Mosab Abu Toha
Poems written from Gaza under siege — a debut that made Mosab Abu Toha one of the most vital young voices in Palestinian literature.
Timeline12
Operation Cast Lead
2008–2009
Israel's twenty-two-day offensive on a blockaded Gaza kills some 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis, and triggers a UN investigation that finds evidence of war crimes on both sides.
The First Intifada
1987–1993
A mass popular uprising erupts in Gaza and spreads across the occupied territories, defined by strikes, boycotts, and stone-throwing youth.
The Gaza Blockade
2007
Israel and Egypt impose a sweeping land, air, and sea blockade on Gaza after Hamas takes control, restricting the movement of two million people and essential goods.
Israel's Disengagement from Gaza
2005
Israel unilaterally evacuates some 8,000 settlers and withdraws its troops from Gaza while retaining control of its borders, airspace, and territorial waters — leaving the Strip's legal status as occupied territory in lasting dispute.
The Great March of Return
2018
Tens of thousands of Gazans join weekly protests at the boundary fence demanding the right of return; Israeli snipers kill more than 180 demonstrators.
Hamas Wins the Palestinian Elections
2006
Hamas wins seventy-four of 132 seats in internationally observed legislative elections, and the boycott that follows sets in motion the Palestinian schism, the 2007 takeover of Gaza, and the blockade.
ICC Arrest Warrants
2024
On 21 November 2024 the International Criminal Court rejected Israel's challenges to its jurisdiction and issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and for the Hamas commander Mohammed Deif.
The ICJ Genocide Case
2024
The International Court of Justice orders provisional measures in South Africa's genocide case against Israel over Gaza, finding the rights claimed plausible.
Operation Pillar of Defense
2012
An eight-day escalation, opened by Israel's assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari, kills 167 Palestinians and six Israelis before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.
Operation Protective Edge: The 51-Day War on Gaza
2014
The deadliest escalation yet in Gaza: more than 2,200 Palestinians and 73 people in Israel are killed over fifty-one days, and a UN commission of inquiry finds evidence of war crimes by both sides.
The Six-Day War
1967
Israel captures the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in six days, beginning a military occupation that continues to this day.
The Unity Intifada and the May War on Gaza
2021
Protests over Sheikh Jarrah and raids on Al-Aqsa ignite a rare uprising across all of historic Palestine — and an eleven-day escalation in Gaza.
Culture1
Poems3
On a Starless Night
Mosab Abu Toha
A bombing night in Gaza: the neighbor's house lies 'like an old carpet on the floor of the earth' — and the poem becomes the only place the small facts of a destroyed household survive.
Running Orders
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Written during Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza, Tuffaha's poem answers the phone call no one should receive — the one that says your house is next — and asks what courtesy means in a prison by the sea.
Sleeping in Gaza
Najwan Darwish
Darwish addresses the Portuguese fado and proposes to sleep the way people sleep when the shells are falling — a poem about exhaustion rather than defiance.
Glossary3
Gaza Blockade
legal
The Gaza blockade is the closure regime imposed by Israel — with Egypt controlling the Rafah crossing — on the Gaza Strip since June 2007, severely restricting the movement of people and goods by land, air, and sea for a population of more than two million.
Identity Cards and the Permit Regime
society
The system of Israeli-controlled Palestinian identity cards and movement permits that determines where Palestinians may live, work, and travel, distinguishing West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem residents from one another and from citizens of Israel.
Naksa
history
The Naksa — Arabic for 'setback' — is the term used across the Arab world for the defeat of June 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and Syria's Golan Heights, and several hundred thousand Palestinians were newly displaced.
Memory16
Al-Faluja
Gaza
Al-Faluja was the anchor of the besieged 'Faluja pocket,' where Egyptian forces — among them a young Gamal Abdel Nasser — held out through the winter of 1948–49. Weeks after the Egyptian withdrawal under the armistice, the town's remaining civilians were driven out and its houses destroyed.
Al-Majdal
Gaza
Al-Majdal (Majdal Asqalan) was a market town of some ten thousand people, famed for its weaving, on the coastal plain north of Gaza. Captured in November 1948, its remaining residents were held under military rule and finally expelled to Gaza in 1950; the town became the Israeli city of Ashkelon's Migdal quarter.
Barbara
Gaza
Barbara, a grape-growing village in the coastal dunes south of Ascalon, kept a mosque holding the tomb of a fourteenth-century sage and was famed for its fruit and the long rugs woven by its women. It endured months of skirmishes before falling in the closing days of Operation Yoav in November 1948; rubble and old streets remain.
Bayt Darras
Gaza
Bayt Darras was a farming town northeast of Gaza, defended by Sudanese troops and local militiamen until the Givati Brigade overran it in May 1948. Its people fled south into the Gaza Strip, where their descendants live in refugee camps to this day.
Burayr
Gaza
Burayr, one of the largest grain-growing villages of the Gaza coast, twice drove off attackers in early 1948 before the Palmach's Negev Brigade seized it in a single night in May, days before the Mandate ended. Five Israeli settlements were planted on its lands; scattered cactuses and the trace of its streets mark the site.
Hamama
Gaza
Hamama — 'dove' in Arabic — was one of the largest villages of the Gaza district, over five thousand people spread in a star pattern along the roads north of Gaza. Harassed from neighboring Nitzanim through early 1948 and swollen with refugees, it was occupied in late October 1948 during Operation Yoav; no trace of its houses remains.
Hulayqat
Gaza
Hulayqat was a small village northeast of Gaza, taken in May 1948, retaken by the Egyptian army in July, and finally captured a second time in October during Operation Yoav. Its ruin, partly forested with sycamore and Christ's-thorn, lies in the corridor where the Egyptian front was cut in two.
Isdud
Gaza
Isdud — ancient Ashdod — was a market town of nearly five thousand on the coastal highway north of Gaza, with two mosques, three shrines, schools, a train station, and a Wednesday market. It was the Egyptian army's northernmost stand of 1948, falling in late October during Operation Yoav; modern Ashdod rose on its lands.
Julis
Gaza
Julis, set on a wadi bank beside a road junction and a British military camp on the Gaza coast highway, fell to the Giv'ati Brigade around the first truce of 1948 and then held against the Egyptian counterattack in which Gamal Abdel Nasser served as staff officer. A few cement houses remain beside the old camp.
Kaufakha
Gaza
Kaufakha was a farming village east of Gaza, founded by Gaza city families in the late nineteenth century around a well-known mosque. Its people repeatedly asked to surrender and stay, to no avail: the Palmach's Negev Brigade expelled them in late May 1948. Only the mosque remains, used as a stable and fodder store.
Al-Muharraqa
Gaza
Al-Muharraqa was a small barley-growing village east of Gaza whose lands had been waqf endowments for Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. Raided with Kaufakha in late May 1948, its people were driven out, and in mid-August — during the second truce — Israeli forces mined and destroyed the village.
Najd
Gaza
Najd — its name means 'elevated ground' — was a small farming village northeast of Gaza whose children walked to school in Simsim. Its people were expelled by the Palmach's Negev Brigade on 13 May 1948, two days before the Mandate ended; Sderot was founded on its lands in 1951.
Qastina
Gaza
Qastina stood on the highway between al-Majdal and the Jerusalem–Jaffa road, its 890 people farming grain and citrus beside the British camp at Beer Tuvia. The Giv'ati Brigade seized it days after the first truce ended, in July 1948; Kiryat Malakhi and several settlements later rose on its lands.
Simsim
Gaza
Simsim, a circular village of gardens and deep wells northeast of Gaza and the hometown of a leader of the 1936 revolt, was captured and emptied by the Palmach's Negev Brigade in mid-May 1948, a day after neighboring Burayr fell. The site was obliterated; only cypress and sycamore trees mark it.
Summil
Gaza
Summil, a grain and sheep village on a wadi-ringed sandy hill whose revenues the Mamluks once endowed to Hebron's Ibrahimi mosque, fell in the Giv'ati Brigade's push south during the 'Ten Days' of July 1948, its people most likely driven toward Hebron. A length of old wall and a cactus-lined road remain.
Yibna
Ramla
Yibna — biblical Jabneel, Roman Jamnia, seat of the Sanhedrin after Jerusalem's destruction — was a town of over five thousand with a station on the Gaza–Lydda railway and a mosque praised by medieval geographers. It fell in early June 1948 as Israeli forces pushed south; its mosque and shrine stand dilapidated beside modern Yavne.
Places8
Beit Hanoun
Gaza Strip
Beit Hanoun, the farming town at Gaza's northern border, fed its people from citrus groves and fields older than memory; the shelling of November 2006 made its name known worldwide, and the war since 2023 has levelled much of it.
Deir al-Balah
Gaza Strip
Deir al-Balah — the 'Monastery of Dates' — grew around a fourth-century monastery on the ancient coast road, hid a Bronze Age cemetery beneath its soil, and after 1948 became town and refugee camp together in the narrow heart of the Gaza Strip.
Dheisheh Camp
Bethlehem, West Bank
Established in 1949 on a third of a square kilometre south of Bethlehem, Dheisheh gathered the survivors of as many as 79 villages from six subdistricts — Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramla, Gaza, Bir al-Sabi' and Jaffa; Zakariyya, Bayt Nattif, Ras Abu Ammar, al-Walaja and al-Qabu among them — into one of the most politically formidable camps in Palestine.
Gaza City
Gaza Strip
Gaza City is among the oldest cities on earth — Philistine stronghold, Mamluk and Ottoman provincial center, home of the Great Omari Mosque. Besieged since 2007, it has since October 2023 been subjected to destruction on a scale that has shattered its ancient fabric.
Jabalia
Gaza Strip
Jabalia, the market town on the rise northeast of Gaza City, became after 1948 the site of the largest refugee camp in the Strip; the first intifada began in its alleys in December 1987, and the war since 2023 has returned to it again and again.
Jerash Camp (Gaza Camp)
Jerash, Jordan
Built in March 1968 for 11,500 Palestinians driven out of Gaza in the June war, Jerash camp is known in Jordan simply as the Gaza Camp. Nearly nine in ten of its residents come from the Gaza Strip — and unlike other Palestinians in Jordan, they hold no citizenship, which has made it the poorest camp in the kingdom.
Khan Younis
Gaza Strip
Khan Younis began in 1387 as a Mamluk caravanserai on the Egypt road and grew into the Gaza district's second town; 1948 made its refugee camp one of the Strip's largest, November 1956 left it a massacre to mourn, and the war since 2023 has left much of the city in ruins.
Rafah
Gaza Strip
Rafah is ancient Raphia, the border town where armies have met since the pharaohs; 1948 filled it with refugees, 1956 left it a massacre to mourn, and the 2024 assault on the city — then sheltering over a million displaced people — was ordered halted by the International Court of Justice.
Arguments2
Israel left Gaza in 2005, so Gaza is no longer occupied
legal
Occupation is a question of effective control, not troop locations: after 2005 Israel kept control of Gaza's borders, airspace, territorial waters, population registry and economy, which is why the UN Security Council (Res. 1860, 2009), the ICRC, Human Rights Watch and the ICJ continued to treat Gaza as occupied.
Civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas, which uses human shields
legal
Using human shields is a war crime under IHL, but it does not suspend the attacker's own duties of distinction, proportionality and precaution — and the UN's 2009 Gaza fact-finding mission, while documenting that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as shields, found no evidence that Palestinian armed groups forced civilians to shield their operations.
Testimonies8
Ahmad al-Haj
A survivor from al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya in the Gaza district, fifteen in 1948, describes the burning of his village and a warplane attack during the family's flight.
Daiffallah Abu Al-Gussain
A Gaza elder born before the state of Israel, he fled his village in the Beer al-Sabe area at the age of seven and still keeps the 1938 deed proving his family's land, to pass to his grandson.
Dalal Nassar
An 84-year-old refugee from Julis recalls walking to Gaza as a girl during the 1948 exodus and the humiliation of the first years in tents at Deir al-Balah.
Jaber Ahmad Mohammad Shaban
A survivor from Simsim, northeast of Gaza, describes the May 1948 attack that drove his family out of the village when he was ten years old.
Mohammed Abdul Jabbar Abu Seif
A 91-year-old survivor from Julis, in the Gaza district, recalls his family's expulsion in 1948 and a lifetime in the refugee camps of Bureij and Nuseirat.
Mutlaq Mahmoud Abu Elkhair
A 96-year-old survivor from Barqa, depopulated in May 1948, recalls walking down the coast into Gaza with his family, expecting to be home again within days.
Ouda Salem Ouda Abu Haddaf
A Bedouin survivor from the Naqab, born in 1936, describes the 1948 attack on his village and the chain of displacements that ended in the refugee camps of Gaza.
Wajiha al-Harsh
An 80-year-old refugee from Jaffa, living in the Jabaliya camp's 'Jaffa neighborhood' in Gaza, recalls the panic of the May 1948 flight from her city.
Exhibitions1
Gaza names23
Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi
c. 2001–
Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi, 22, survived the February 29, 2024 'flour massacre,' in which at least 112 Palestinians were killed around an aid convoy in Gaza City; after hours of searching he found the body of his 15-year-old cousin Moatasem at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Anas al-Sharif
1996–2025
Anas al-Sharif, one of Gaza's most prominent journalists, was killed with five colleagues in an Israeli missile strike on the Al Jazeera tent outside al-Shifa Hospital; Israel claimed responsibility, alleging he led a Hamas cell — an accusation CPJ said lacked credible evidence and fit a documented pattern.
Awni Eldous
c. 2011–2023
Awni Eldous, a 12-year-old who ran a small gaming channel and dreamed of reaching a million subscribers, was among 15 people — seven of them children — killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Gaza City in the war's first hours, the BBC and Haaretz reported.
Bisan Owda
Filmmaker and AJ+ journalist who documented the war from inside Gaza
Bisan Owda, a filmmaker from Beit Hanoun, documented her family's displacement and Gaza's destruction in the AJ+ series 'It's Bisan from Gaza and I'm Still Alive,' reaching tens of millions of viewers and winning a Peabody Award and a News & Documentary Emmy in 2024.
Ghassan Abu Sitta
1969–
Ghassan Abu Sitta spent 43 days operating under siege in Gaza's al-Ahli and al-Shifa hospitals at the start of the war, then became one of the conflict's most prominent medical witnesses, giving testimony to British police and evidence to the International Criminal Court.
Hala Khreis
c. 1965–2023
Hala Khreis, 57, a retired Arabic teacher, was shot in the chest and killed on November 12, 2023, as she fled Gaza City's al-Rimal neighborhood on foot at the front of a column of civilians waving white flags, holding the hand of her four-year-old grandson Tayem; her family said Israeli forces fired the shot, and a CNN investigation found Israeli troops had been stationed as close as 200 meters away.
Hossam Shabat
2001–2025
Hossam Shabat, 23, was killed when an Israeli drone strike hit his car in Beit Lahia days after Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire; Israel claimed he was a Hamas sniper, an accusation first leveled in October 2024 that Al Jazeera and press-freedom groups rejected as baseless.
Hussam Abu Safiya
c. 1973–
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was detained when Israeli forces raided and shut down Kamal Adwan Hospital — the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza — and has been held without charge or trial under Israel's 'unlawful combatant' law ever since.
Ibrahim Abu Shaaban
c. 2019–2025
Ibrahim Ihab Abu Shaaban, six, was one of eleven members of the Abu Shaaban family — seven of them children — killed around 3 p.m. on October 17, 2025, when Israeli forces attacked the pickup truck carrying the family through Gaza City's al-Zeitoun neighborhood, one week after the ceasefire took effect; the Israeli military told the BBC the vehicle had crossed the 'yellow line' and troops 'opened fire to remove the threat.'
Ibrahim Zaher
c. 2000–2025
Ibrahim Zaher, 25, an Al Jazeera camera operator, was killed with four colleagues when an Israeli missile struck the network's tent at al-Shifa Hospital — the channel's entire Gaza City team, lost in a single strike that press-freedom groups called a targeted attack.
Majdi al-Tatar
c. 1980–2024
Majdi al-Tatar, 44, a member of the Palestinian Paralympic swimming team who lost a leg at age ten and became one of Gaza's best-known swimming coaches, was killed in the Israeli strike on the al-Taba'een school shelter during dawn prayers.
Marwan al-Sultan
c. 1976–2025
Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, 49, director of Gaza's Indonesian Hospital and one of the last two cardiologists in the Strip, was killed on July 2, 2025, when an Israeli airstrike struck the rented Gaza City apartment where his displaced family was sheltering; his wife, a daughter, his sister and his son-in-law were killed with him, and the Israeli military said it had struck a 'key terrorist' and was reviewing harm to civilians.
Mohammed Qreiqeh
c. 1992–2025
Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, gave his last broadcast minutes before an Israeli missile hit the journalists' tent at al-Shifa Hospital, killing him with correspondent Anas al-Sharif, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and other media workers; UN experts called the strike a deliberate attempt to silence reporting from Gaza City.
Motaz Azaiza
1999–
Motaz Azaiza spent 108 days documenting Israel's bombardment of Gaza for an audience that grew into the tens of millions before evacuating to Qatar in January 2024; TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people of 2024.
Plestia Alaqad
c. 2001–
Plestia Alaqad, 22, became known as 'the eyes of Gaza' for the Instagram video diaries she filmed through the war's first weeks; after her accounts were hacked and her neighborhood destroyed, she left Gaza with her family in November 2023, later publishing the bestselling memoir 'The Eyes of Gaza.'
Raed Mushtaha
Father of three killed waiting for flour in the 'flour massacre'
Raed Mushtaha, a father of three, was killed in the February 29, 2024 'flour massacre' in Gaza City; his brother Mohammed found his body on the coastal road and said he was killed by a tank shell fired into the crowd waiting for aid.
Rakan al-Najjar
c. 2015–2025
Rakan, ten, was one of nine children of doctors Alaa and Hamdi al-Najjar killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the family home in Khan Younis; his name — Rakan Hamdi Yahya al-Najjar, ten years old — appears on the Gaza health authorities' list of the war dead published by The Guardian.
Razan al-Najjar
c. 1997–2018
Razan al-Najjar, 21, a volunteer medic treating protesters at the Gaza boundary fence, was fatally shot by Israeli fire as she stood with fellow medics about 25 meters from the fence in her medical uniform; a B'Tselem investigation concluded she was deliberately targeted, and spatial analysis commissioned by The New York Times traced the shot to a sniper's position at the fence.
Saifeddin Abutaha
c. 1998–2024
Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, 25, the Palestinian member of World Central Kitchen's Gaza team, was behind the wheel of one of the convoy's cars when Israeli drones struck it on April 1, 2024, killing him and six foreign colleagues.
Suleiman al-Obeid
1984–2025
Suleiman al-Obeid, 41, a former Palestine international known as the 'Palestinian Pelé,' was shot dead on August 6, 2025, while waiting for humanitarian aid in southern Gaza, the Palestine Football Association said; AP said it could not independently verify the account, and the Israeli military said an initial review found no record of the incident.
Suwar al-Jamasi
c. 2021–2025
Suwar Obeida al-Jamasi, four, was killed before dawn on March 18, 2025, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the al-Jamasi family home in Gaza City's al-Sabra neighborhood, killing nine members of the family including four children; the Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying it killed her grandfather, Hamas political-bureau member Muhammad Daoud al-Jamasi, while Airwars recorded the four children and three women among the dead.
Tayem Khreis
c. 2019–
Tayem, four, was walking a few paces ahead of the crowd, holding his grandmother Hala Khreis's hand with a white flag in his other hand, when she was shot dead beside him on November 12, 2023, during the flight from Gaza City's al-Rimal neighborhood; separated from his family in the chaos, he reached the south with acquaintances and was later found in Rafah.
Zomi Frankcom
c. 1980–2024
Lalzawmi 'Zomi' Frankcom, 43, of Melbourne, was one of seven World Central Kitchen workers killed when Israeli drones struck their convoy in Gaza; an Australian government inquiry found the attack resulted from serious failures of IDF procedures, mistaken identification and errors in decision-making.