One thread, every collection
Gaza
The strip, its people, its record — history, names, voices, law.
180 entries across 19 collections
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.
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.
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.
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 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 flour massacre
2024
In the pre-dawn dark of 29 February 2024, Israeli forces opened fire on crowds waiting for a rare aid convoy on Gaza City's coastal road. Gaza's Health Ministry counted at least 112 killed and more than 750 wounded — people who had come out in the cold, in a starving north, for flour.
The Founding of Hamas
1987
Two days into the intifada, seven Muslim Brotherhood leaders meet in Gaza City under Shaykh Ahmad Yasin and form the Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas — committing the Brotherhood to armed struggle.
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.
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.
The Hamas Document of General Principles
2017
Hamas issues a second founding text that defines Palestine in national rather than religious terms, separates Zionism from Judaism, and names a state on the 1967 lines as a formula of national consensus — without recognising Israel.
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.
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 Split: Gaza and Ramallah
2007
Sixteen months after the election it lost, Fatah fights Hamas for control of Gaza and loses. Two administrations emerge on the same national territory, and every attempt to reunite them since has failed.
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.
'Iraq al-Manshiyya
Gaza · 1948
'Iraq al-Manshiyya, on the rolling ground where the coastal plain meets the Hebron foothills, held 2,010 people, three wells, two mosques and a shrine on the tell above it. Israeli forces failed to take it three times in 1948; it ended the war inside the Faluja pocket, and its people were intimidated into flight in the weeks after the armistice of 24 February 1949. A eucalyptus forest now covers the site.
Al-Faluja
Gaza · 1949
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-Jiyya
Gaza · 1948
Al-Jiyya — 'water collector,' for the wadis that flooded it, and circular in plan for the same reason — was a grain village of 1,230 known for its cheese, which it sold in Gaza and al-Majdal. It fell with al-Majdal on 4–5 November 1948 at the end of Operation Yoav, and its people probably fled or were expelled into the already overcrowded Gaza Strip. Every trace of the village has been obliterated.
Al-Jura
Gaza · 1948
Al-Jura — Jurat Asqalan — stood a kilometer from the sea five kilometers west of al-Majdal, one of the main fishing centers in Palestine and the summer resort of al-Majdal, with an annual spring mawsim that drew the whole district. It was almost certainly taken with al-Majdal on 4–5 November 1948 at the end of Operation Yoav, after weeks of aerial bombardment. Ashkelon was built on its land; one village house was spared.
Al-Majdal
Gaza · 1950
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.
Al-Masmiyya al-Kabira
Gaza · 1948
Al-Masmiyya al-Kabira stood at the junction of the roads to al-Majdal, Ramla and Jerusalem, a village of 2,520 with two mosques, two schools, a clinic and a Thursday market that drew the whole district. It fell in July 1948 during Operation An-Far, in what the Israeli official history calls clearing operations in the brigade's rear. Both schools still stand — the girls' school deserted, the boys' school an Israeli army installation.
Al-Masmiyya al-Saghira
Gaza · 1948
A village on the southern coastal plain 42 kilometers northeast of Gaza, founded in the second half of the nineteenth century by the al-Hurani clan of neighboring al-Masmiyya al-Kabira and home to some 530 people by the British survey of 1945. It was depopulated in July 1948 during Giv'ati Brigade operations between the two truces.
Al-Muharraqa
Gaza · 1948
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.
Al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya
Gaza · 1948
Al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya was the western of three villages of the same name that stood together in a right triangle on the coastal plain, sharing one school between them. Israeli sources put its fall in the early stages of Operation Barak in May 1948; Gamal Abdel Nasser, then a junior officer nearby, dated it a month later and blamed the Egyptian command for letting empty villages be taken. Every house is gone; the old village road is still visible.
Al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya
Gaza · 1948
The northernmost of the three Sawafir villages on the coastal plain, 33 kilometers northeast of Gaza, with a population the British government's April 1945 survey estimated at 680, all Muslims. It was occupied and depopulated during Operation Barak in May 1948; the reached sources give occupation dates ranging from 11 to 18 May.
Al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya
Gaza · 1948
Al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya, the eastern of three neighbouring Sawafir villages, had 970 residents and 13,831 dunums in 1944/45. Israeli-derived accounts date its occupation by the Giv'ati Brigade to 18 May 1948; Gamal Abdel Nasser's account instead places it around 25 June. A site survey published in 1992 found no village houses and recorded new buildings where the mosque had stood, but the fetched sources provide no later dated survey.
Barbara
Gaza · 1948
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 · 1948
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.
Bayt Jirja
Gaza · 1948
Bayt Jirja, fifteen and a half kilometres northeast of Gaza, had 940 residents in 1944/45. Its occupation date is not settled: cited records give 30 October, 1 November, or 4–5 November 1948 while also allowing that it may have occurred several days earlier. A 1992 survey recorded rubble, old streets and one standing house; the sources also disagree over whether three nearby settlements count as being on village land.
Bayt Tima
Gaza · 1948
Bayt Tima, twenty-one kilometers from Gaza, held 1,060 people and shared its school with Kawkaba and Hulayqat. Its defenders drove off a Zionist infiltration in February 1948 and it stayed in Arab hands through both truces; aerial and artillery bombardment in mid-October emptied much of it, and the Giv'ati Brigade took it on 18–19 October during Operation Yoav. No Israeli settlement stands on its land; sycamore and carob grow around the rubble.
Burayr
Gaza · 1948
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.
Dayr Sunayd
Gaza · 1948
Dayr Sunayd stood beside the coastal road and railway twelve kilometers northeast of Gaza. Bombed during Operation Yoav, it was probably occupied in late October or early November 1948; the sources disagree on the exact date.
Hamama
Gaza · 1948
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.
Hatta
Gaza · 1948
Hatta was a rain-fed farming village thirty-one kilometres northeast of Gaza. The 1944/45 record counted 970 people and accounted for all 5,305 dunums of village land, 5,108 of them planted in cereals. The sources agree that the Giv'ati Brigade occupied Hatta during the July 1948 Ten Days and record its depopulation, but give 14–15, 17, or 18 July for the capture; the surviving site description dates to 1992, not the present.
Hiribya
Gaza · 1948
Hiribya — the Crusaders' Forbie, Yaqut's Firbiya — stood among the sand dunes fourteen kilometers north of Gaza, an oasis of citrus, grapes, bananas and sugar cane, and the site of a battle in 1244 that historians rank second only to Hittin. A planned attack during Operation Yoav was called off when a large Egyptian force was found quartered there; the village probably fell in early November 1948. The mosque, now a warehouse, and one house are all that survive.
Huj
Gaza · 1948
Huj, on the northern edge of the Negev, was founded in the early nineteenth century when the governor of Gaza gave the land away free and built a police post to draw settlers to it. Many Zionist officials counted the village friendly; the Negev Brigade ordered its people out on 31 May 1948 all the same, and Benny Morris records that they were expelled westward and their houses looted and blown up. Their appeal to return that September was refused.
Hulayqat
Gaza · 1948
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 · 1948
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 · 1948
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.
Jusayr
Gaza · 1948
Jusayr stood between two bridges over Wadi al-Jira, a grain village of 1,180 whose elders said it had been a stopping place for pilgrims going to Mecca. Israeli sources put its occupation in the second half of July 1948, in the Giv'ati offensive whose orders were to break through the Egyptian lines and expel the civilians of the ground taken; two Egyptian sources, one of them Gamal Abdel Nasser, date it a month earlier, during the first truce. One house stands in a peach orchard.
Karatiyya
Gaza · 1948
Karatiyya — the Crusaders' Galatie, taken by Salah al-Din, where the Mamluk sultan camped in 1299 on his way to fight the Mongols — was a rainfed grain village of 1,370 with a mill and two wells. The Giv'ati and Armored brigades stormed it on the night of 17–18 July 1948, hours before the second truce; an Egyptian counterattack reached its outskirts. A destroyed cemetery among eucalyptus is what is left.
Kaufakha
Gaza · 1948
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.
Kawkaba
Gaza · 1948
A village on the southern coastal plain 25 kilometers northeast of Gaza city, whose population the British government's April 1945 survey estimated at 680. It changed hands no fewer than three times in 1948, and the Israeli army announced its capture on 20 October during Operation Yoav.
Najd
Gaza · 1948
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.
Ni'ilya
Gaza · 1948
Ni'ilya stood three kilometers south-southwest of al-Majdal on a site its people had rebuilt north of an older one the dunes had swallowed, holding the sand back with fruit trees and cactus hedges. Its school was finished in the winter of 1948 and never opened because of the war. The village was taken around the fall of al-Majdal on 4–5 November 1948; one house remains, lived in by a Palestinian family.
Qastina
Gaza · 1948
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 · 1948
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 · 1948
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.
Tall al-Turmus
Gaza · 1948
Tall al-Turmus stood on a low hill northeast of Gaza, a village of 760 whose name joined the Arabic words for hill and lupine. It had a mosque and shared a school of about 160 pupils with Qastina. Sources disagree on the exact occupation date: PalQuest places it around 9–10 July 1948 during Operation An-Far, while Zochrot lists 1 July. Khalidi's 1992 survey recorded house rubble among cactus, sycamore and eucalyptus, with the surrounding land farmed.
Yasur
Gaza · 1948
Yasur was a Gaza-district farming village of 1,070 people in 1944/45, with a mosque, shops and a school on a plateau between roads to al-Majdal and Ramla. Sources place its capture by the Giv'ati Brigade around 10–11 June 1948, though one source summary gives 9 June. A 1992 survey found one standing house in a fenced military zone containing an aircraft-parts site; the cited records disagree over later settlement boundaries.
Yibna
Ramla · 1948
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.
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.
Ahmad al-Haj
al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya
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
Al-Shalalah, Beer al-Sabe district
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
Julis
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
Simsim
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
Julis
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
Barqa
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 village near Beer al-Sabe, Naqab
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.
Umm Omar
Jusayr, Gaza district
Eight years old when her family was expelled from Jusayr in 1948; she has lived in Jabaliya refugee camp ever since.
Wajiha al-Harsh
Jaffa
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.
Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi
Survivor of the 'flour massacre' on al-Rashid Street
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
Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza City
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
Twelve-year-old who dreamed of YouTube fame
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.
Bilal el-Essi
28-year-old killed seeking flour for his family
Bilal el-Essi, a football-mad 28-year-old from Gaza City who was quick with a joke, went to the seafront Al Rashid Road with two of his brothers in the pre-dawn dark of 29 February 2024, joining hundreds waiting in the cold for a rare convoy of food aid. He was killed when Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd — the aid-convoy killings Gaza's Health Ministry says left at least 112 people dead and more than 750 wounded, remembered as the flour massacre.
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
British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon
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
Retired teacher shot dead while fleeing with her white-flag-carrying grandson
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.
Hamza al-Dahdouh
Al Jazeera camera operator; eldest son of Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh
Hamza al-Dahdouh, 27, was killed with freelance videographer Mustafa Thuraya when an Israeli drone strike hit their car as they drove back from a filming assignment near Rafah; Israel later alleged he was an Islamic Jihad operative, citing a document that experts questioned and that Al Jazeera and his family rejected as fabricated.
Hind Rajab
Six-year-old from Gaza City
Hind Rajab, six, was killed with six relatives when Israeli tank fire hit their car as they fled Tel al-Hawa, after she spent hours on the phone with Red Crescent dispatchers pleading for rescue; the two paramedics sent to save her were also killed, and forensic investigators concluded a tank fired on the car from as close as 13 metres.
Hossam Shabat
Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent in northern Gaza
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
Pediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital
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
Six-year-old killed with ten members of his family when their truck was attacked a week into the ceasefire
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
Al Jazeera camera operator in Gaza City
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.
Ismail al-Ghoul
Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in northern Gaza
Ismail al-Ghoul, 27, and cameraman Rami al-Rifi were killed by an Israeli drone strike on their car minutes after reporting from the destroyed home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh; Al Jazeera called it a targeted assassination, and Israel's claim that he was a Hamas operative was rejected by the network and questioned by press-freedom groups.
Khaled Nabhan
Grandfather whose farewell to his slain granddaughter became a symbol of Gaza's grief
Khaled Nabhan, 54, known worldwide as the grandfather who cradled his granddaughter Reem Ali Khalil Badwan and called her 'the soul of my soul,' was himself killed in an Israeli strike on Nuseirat refugee camp on 16 December 2024.
Majdi al-Tatar
Amputee champion swimmer and coach killed in the al-Taba'een school strike
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
Cardiologist and director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza
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
Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza City
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
Photojournalist who became Gaza's 'eyes and ears'
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
Journalist whose video diaries from Gaza reached millions
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
Ten-year-old killed with eight of his siblings in the strike on the al-Najjar family home
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
Volunteer paramedic during Gaza's Great March of Return
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.
Refaat Alareer
Poet, professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, editor of 'Gaza Writes Back'
Refaat Alareer, 44, was killed with his brother, his sister and four of her children in an Israeli airstrike on his sister's home, a day after a threatening phone call prompted him to leave the shelter where he had been staying; his final poem, 'If I Must Die,' spread across the world after his death.
Saifeddin Abutaha
Palestinian driver and translator for World Central Kitchen
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
Former Palestine national football team forward nicknamed the 'Palestinian Pelé'
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
Four-year-old killed with eight relatives in the strike on the al-Jamasi family home
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
Boy filmed waving a white flag beside his grandmother Hala Khreis when she was shot
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
Australian aid worker killed with six World Central Kitchen colleagues
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.
Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi
Pediatrician and co-founder of Hamas, killed three weeks after succeeding Ahmed Yassin · 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.
Bisan Owda
Journalist and filmmaker reporting from Gaza
The Palestinian reporter whose first-person AJ+ report documented civilian life and displacement in Gaza and won both a Peabody and a 2024 News & Documentary Emmy.
Eyad al-Sarraj
Psychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme · 1944–2013
Gaza's first practising psychiatrist, who built mental health care under occupation into a form of human rights work.
Fathi Shaqaqi
Physician and founder of the Islamic Jihad Movement, assassinated in Malta in 1995 · 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
Physician and head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference · 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)
First woman member of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority's first minister of social affairs · 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 decades of exile as minister of social affairs.
Razan al-Najjar
Volunteer paramedic · 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.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, assassinated in Gaza in 2004 · 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.
Wael al-Dahdouh
Journalist, Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief · 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.
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.
On a Starless Night
Mosab Abu Toha · 2022
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 · 2014
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 · 2014
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.
30 Seconds from Gaza: Diary of Genocide
Mohammad Sabaaneh · 2025
A Palestinian cartoonist turns brief, vulnerable phone footage from Gaza into a durable black-and-white graphic record.
A Long Walk from Gaza
Asmaa Alatawna · 2024
A coming-of-age novel about a girl seeking freedom from occupation, patriarchy, and the estrangement of exile.
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians
Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé · 2010
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.
Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom
Norman Finkelstein · 2018
Finkelstein's prosecutorial inquest, built from the human rights record, into Israel's repeated assaults on Gaza and the blockade that frames them.
Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance
Tareq Baconi · 2018
A documented history of Hamas from its founding to its transformation into the administration of a besieged territory — and of the Israeli policy that made the siege the point.
Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation
Edited by Vijay Prashad · 2015
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 · 2017
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 · 2022
Poems written from Gaza under siege — a debut that made Mosab Abu Toha one of the most vital young voices in Palestinian literature.
Water to Water: Gaza Renga
Marilyn Hacker and Deema K. Shehabi · 2025
Two poets answer one another across distance in a book-length call-and-response shaped by Gaza, exile, and shared witness.
We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza's Youth
Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey · 2025
More than ten years of writing by young people in Gaza, gathered as lives, ambitions, losses, and futures rather than a casualty count.
Eyad El-Sarraj: The real heroes are the victims
Eyad El-Sarraj
I am proud and happy to receive this prize, but I consider that the real heroes are the victims of violence, torture and war.
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.
Haydar Abd al-Shafi at Madrid: We Come to You From a Tortured Land
Haydar Abd al-Shafi
We come to you from a tortured land and a proud, though captive people, having been asked to negotiate with our occupiers, but leaving behind the children of the intifada, and a people under occupation and under curfew who enjoined us not to surrender or forget.
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.
Rana Nashashibi: I'd rather build a house than offer counselling
Rana Nashashibi
Next time I go to Gaza, I won't go as psychologist. I will go as a builder.
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.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
DFLP · founded 22 February 1969
Split from the PFLP in February 1969 on the argument that a petit-bourgeois group could not simply declare itself Marxist-Leninist. It was the first Palestinian organisation to argue publicly, from 1973, for a state on the West Bank and Gaza — and the organisation responsible for the killing of twenty-five schoolchildren at Ma'alot in 1974.
The Islamic Resistance Movement
Hamas · founded 9 December 1987
Founded in Gaza City on the second day of the First Intifada by seven Muslim Brotherhood leaders around Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Its 1988 charter and its 2017 Document of General Principles say materially different things, and the movement issued the second itself, to restate its position.
The Palestinian National Initiative
al-Mubadara · founded 17 June 2002
Founded at the height of the Second Intifada by a physician, an elder statesman of Gaza and a literary critic dying in New York, on the argument that Palestinians needed a democratic third force between Fatah's corruption and Hamas's armed maximalism — and that the resistance most likely to succeed was unarmed.
Dammi Falastini
music
Mohammed Assaf's modern Palestinian identity song — catalogued as a 2014 single, carried by a title that says it without euphemism: My Blood Is Palestinian.
Palestinian Pottery
craft
Red clay thrown on a hand wheel in Gaza and Hebron — cooking pots, water jars, and plant vessels made by families whose surname is simply 'the potter'.
Dahiya Doctrine
legal
An Israeli military doctrine, named for the Beirut suburb largely destroyed in the 2006 Lebanon war, under which force disproportionate to the threat is applied to the civilian areas from which attacks originate, on the premise that such areas are to be treated as military targets. It was stated publicly by Major General Gadi Eisenkot in October 2008 and recorded by the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict in 2009.
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.
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.
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.
'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza
Amnesty International
Amnesty International's report of 5 December 2024, the first in which the organisation concluded that a state it investigates is committing genocide — finding sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
"Anyone else struggling with work-genocide balance?" — Gaza, and the people watching it from outside
Federica Cavazzoni, Ala' Mustafa, Cindy Sousa, Ola H Abuward, Mona Ameen Nofal and Guido Veronese, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
Thirty testimonies collected between November 2023 and June 2024 — fifteen from people in the Gaza Strip and fifteen from mental health professionals in Europe — in the only peer-reviewed study this archive has found that puts the experience of living the catastrophe and the experience of watching it in the same frame, in that order.
A Textbook Case of Genocide — Raz Segal
Jewish Currents
The essay of 13 October 2023 in which Raz Segal, a scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies, argued that Israel's assault on Gaza should be understood as a textbook case of genocide — one of the earliest such assessments by a scholar in the field.
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.
An Australian cohort, and how thin this evidence base still is
Susan J Rees, Tyson Whitten, Alvin Kuowei Tay, Aino Suomi, Batool Moussa, Fatima Hassoun, Nawal Nadar and Derrick Silove, The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific
A prospective cohort of 410 women in Australia, assessed before and during the war, finding significantly greater increases in panic-disorder symptoms, and poorer quality of life, among those connected to Lebanon, Gaza and the Palestinian territories. It is the only prospective before-and-after design this archive could locate — and the near-absence of anything measuring Palestinians specifically is itself the finding.
Anatomy of a Genocide — report of the Special Rapporteur (A/HRC/55/73)
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967
The Special Rapporteur's report to the Human Rights Council's 55th session concluding that there are reasonable grounds to believe the threshold indicating the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met.
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.
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.
Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War — Lee Mordechai
Lee Mordechai, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The continuously updated documentary record compiled by Israeli historian Lee Mordechai, running to over a thousand footnoted references to testimonies, video, investigations and reporting, with chapters including one on dehumanisation — now the founding document of a wider multi-contributor project, Witnessing the Gaza War.
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.
Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch's 179-page report of 19 December 2024 finding that Israeli authorities intentionally deprived Palestinians in Gaza of water, committing the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.
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.
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme — the Palestinian clinical record
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), Gaza City, Deir El-Balah and Khan Younis
The independent Palestinian mental health organisation founded in Gaza in 1990 by the psychiatrist Dr Eyad El-Sarraj. It is the longest-running clinical record of what the blockade and the successive assaults have done to people in the Strip, kept by Palestinians treating Palestinians.
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.
Know Their Names: the children killed in Israel's war on Gaza
Al Jazeera Interactive
Al Jazeera's interactive memorial to the more than ten thousand children killed in Gaza — built from the Ministry of Health's named lists, presented child by child with names and ages, so that a statistic that defeats comprehension becomes a register of individual lives. One of the essential companion records to this archive's own Registry.
Legal analysis of the conduct of Israel in Gaza pursuant to the Genocide Convention (A/HRC/60/CRP.3)
UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel
The Commission of Inquiry's report of 16 September 2025 concluding on reasonable grounds that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed four of the five genocidal acts under the Genocide Convention against Palestinians in Gaza, and that President Herzog, Prime Minister Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Gallant incited genocide.
Norwegian Refugee Council — Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA), Palestine
Norwegian Refugee Council
NRC's legal-aid programme in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza: free information, counselling and representation on housing, land and property — demolition, eviction and confiscation orders, access restrictions, and documentation.
Omer Bartov on Gaza — a genocide scholar's changed assessment
Democracy Now!
Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, explaining when and why he revised his initial assessment of the Gaza campaign and concluded that Israel's conduct constitutes genocide.
Our Genocide — B'Tselem's determination on Gaza
B'Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories)
The July 2025 report in which B'Tselem — an Israeli human rights organisation founded in 1989 — concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, published the same day as a parallel report by Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
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.
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.
The same people, measured three times — psychological distress in Gaza, 2020 to 2025
Curdin Brugger, Bassam Abu Hamad, Jan Hattendorf, Mirko S Winkler and Nicole Probst-Hensch, eClinicalMedicine
A longitudinal population-based cohort in the Gaza Strip that surveyed the same 677 adults in 2020, 2023 and 2025. High psychological distress went from 19.5% before the war to 67.2% in January 2025 — a rise measured within the same people, not across different samples.
The West Bank is not a bystander — trauma among Palestinian undergraduates during the war on Gaza
Israa Baker, Azzam Zrineh, Mohammad AL Qadire, Mayyasah Ramadan, Hameeda Abu Sneineh, Elham Kateeb and Salam Khatib, Scientific Reports
A cross-sectional study of 819 undergraduates recruited primarily at seven West Bank universities, conducted February to April 2024. 87.2% reported psychological distress and 51.9% met criteria for PTSD or complex PTSD — and 97.4% had not received specialist mental health support during the conflict period.
Trapped — Gaza's children before this war, after fifteen years of blockade
Save the Children International
Save the Children's 2022 report, a repeat of its own 2018 research, consulting 488 children and 168 caregivers in the Gaza Strip. Four in five children reported living with depression, grief and fear — sixteen months before October 2023. It is the baseline the current figures should be read against.
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.
Unbearable suffering — the Palestinian clinicians' account of what Gaza is doing to the mind
Hanna Kienzler, Gwyn Daniel, Weeam Hammoudeh, Rana Nashashibi, Yasser Abu-Jamei and Rita Giacaman, BMJ Global Health
A commentary in BMJ Global Health written by clinicians and researchers at Birzeit University's Institute of Community and Public Health, the Palestinian Counseling Centre and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, arguing that the psychological consequences of the assault on Gaza cannot be held inside individual diagnosis, and that justice is a precondition of healing.
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 Health Emergency Appeal 2026 — one million people needing mental health support
World Health Organization, occupied Palestinian territory
WHO's 2026 emergency appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory, which puts the mental health need in the Gaza Strip at an estimated one million people, and records that West Bank mental health needs are acute — set against a health system in which only half of Gaza's hospitals are partially functional and 48% of primary care centres are operating.
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.
Yes, It Is Genocide — Amos Goldberg
Local Call / Mekomit, translated by Sol Salbe
The essay of April 2024 in which Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust and genocide researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in Hebrew for an Israeli readership that what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide.
Gaza, by Name
The district before the Strip
Before Gaza was a strip it was a district: grain villages, a weaving town, orchards along the coast road. This walk names the places that were emptied into it, and the camps their people built on top of themselves.
Gaza: Siege and Sumud
The record of the strip
One of the oldest cities on earth, under the most documented siege of the modern era — and the people who keep teaching, writing, and reporting through it.
Where this thread crosses others
Counted on records the two threads actually share, not on words they have in common.
A thread is a reading order, not a boundary — every record above belongs to other threads too.