Blockade of the Gaza Strip

Based on Wikipedia: Blockade of the Gaza Strip

The World's Largest Open-Air Prison

Imagine a territory the size of Philadelphia, home to over two million people, where you cannot leave by land, sea, or air without permission from a foreign government that will almost certainly say no. Where the food that enters is calculated to meet minimum caloric requirements. Where construction materials are banned because they might be used to build tunnels. Where fishermen can only venture a few miles offshore before being fired upon.

This is Gaza under blockade.

The phrase "open-air prison" gets thrown around in political rhetoric, but international politicians were using it to describe Gaza as early as September 2005—before Hamas ever took power, on the very last day of Israel's military withdrawal from the territory. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy warned of it. Jordan's deputy prime minister warned of it. Four days later, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations General Assembly that without freedom of movement, "Gaza will remain a huge prison."

They were predicting the future, and they were right.

The Blockade Before the Blockade

Here's something that surprises many people: the restrictions on Gaza didn't begin with Hamas. They began in 1991, when Israel cancelled the general exit permit that had allowed Palestinians in the occupied territories to move relatively freely. This was initially supposed to be temporary.

It became permanent in March 1993.

What started as a security response to violence crystallized into an institutionalized system that has never been fully lifted. Between 1993 and 1996 alone, Israel imposed "total closure" on Gaza for a cumulative 342 days—nearly a full year out of three. During total closure, absolutely no movement of people or goods was permitted between Gaza and Israel, the West Bank, or foreign markets.

The economic devastation was immediate and measurable. The World Bank estimated that closures during 1996 alone cost Gaza almost 40 percent of its entire gross national product. Academics and diplomats were already calling it collective punishment back then—a characterization that would only grow louder over the following decades.

In 1994, Israel built a physical barrier separating Gaza from Israel. Four crossing points were established: Kerem Shalom, Karni, Erez, and Sufa. Every single item entering or leaving Gaza through Israel—every tomato, every medical supply, every bag of cement—had to pass through one of these checkpoints and undergo security inspection.

The 2005 Withdrawal: Freedom or a New Kind of Control?

In 2005, Israel made a dramatic move. It withdrew all its settlers and military forces from inside Gaza, redeploying troops along the border instead. This was called the "disengagement."

But disengagement didn't mean disconnection.

Israel retained control of Gaza's airspace. It retained control of Gaza's coastline. It retained control of the population registry—the database that determines who gets identity documents and travel permits. And crucially, it retained control of all the crossing points except Rafah, which connects Gaza to Egypt.

Human rights groups documented what happened next. Israel "frequently blockaded Gaza in order to apply pressure on the population in response to political developments or attacks by armed groups." The special envoy of the Middle East Quartet, James Wolfensohn, observed that "Gaza had been effectively sealed off from the outside world since the Israeli disengagement, and the humanitarian and economic consequences for the Palestinian population were profound. There were already food shortages. Palestinian workers and traders to Israel were unable to cross the border."

One story captures the absurdity of the situation. When Israeli settlers left Gaza, they abandoned their greenhouses—sophisticated agricultural operations worth millions. International donors, including American philanthropists, bought these greenhouses and gave them to Palestinians, hoping they could form the foundation of a new export economy.

The greenhouses produced harvests. The crops grew. And then they rotted.

In January 2006, Israel closed the Karni crossing—the only exit point for exports—completely. Between January and May of that year, Gazan farmers harvested over 12,700 tonnes of produce, almost all meant for European markets. Only 1,600 tonnes—less than 13 percent—actually made it out. The rest was donated locally or simply destroyed.

Hamas Wins an Election

On January 25, 2006, Palestinians went to the polls to elect their Legislative Council. This election took place during a full blockade of Gaza. Hamas won.

To understand what happened next, you need to understand what Hamas represented to different parties. To many Palestinians, Hamas was the party that hadn't been tainted by the corruption scandals plaguing Fatah, the party of longtime leader Yasser Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas. To Israel and much of the West, Hamas was a terrorist organization that had killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings and had called for Israel's destruction.

The international response was swift. The Quartet on the Middle East—comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations—said it would continue aiding the Palestinian Authority only if Hamas met three conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, and accept all previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, including the Oslo Accords.

Hamas refused.

The consequences cascaded. The Quartet cut off all dialogue and aid. The United States discontinued $400 million in foreign assistance. But the most damaging blow came from Israel alone: it began withholding the Palestinian Authority's own tax revenue.

Here's how Palestinian tax collection worked. Israeli authorities collected taxes on goods entering the Palestinian territories. These funds—Palestinian money, collected in Palestine—were supposed to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority's budget. By holding onto these revenues, Israel could, in the words of the International Crisis Group, "virtually turn the Palestinian economy on and off."

Israel turned it off.

Without these transfers, the Palestinian Authority couldn't pay its employees, including police officers. This destabilized an already fragile security situation, contributing to the chaos that would soon engulf Gaza.

The Battle of Gaza

In March 2007, Fatah and Hamas attempted to share power in a unity government. It lasted about three months.

In June, open warfare erupted between the two factions. Hamas fighters attacked Fatah positions throughout Gaza. They seized government buildings. They threw Fatah members from rooftops. They replaced Palestinian Authority officials with their own people. By the time the fighting ended, Hamas controlled Gaza completely, and Fatah had fled.

President Abbas, from the West Bank, declared the Hamas-led government dissolved. He created a new government by decree, without the approval of the now-Hamas-dominated legislature. The international community recognized Abbas's government as legitimate and resumed aid to the West Bank.

Gaza was left under Hamas control and under an intensified blockade.

The Tightening Grip

In autumn 2007, Israel officially designated Gaza a "hostile entity" and instituted what it called a policy of "economic warfare." The stated goal was to apply pressure on Hamas while meeting the minimum humanitarian needs of Gaza's population.

What did this mean in practice?

Power reductions. Stringent import restrictions. Border closures. Israeli security officials described the export ban explicitly as "a political decision to separate Gaza from the West Bank."

In January 2008, following continued rocket attacks on southern Israel, Israel expanded its sanctions further. It fully sealed its borders with Gaza and temporarily halted fuel imports. For nearly a week, the blockade was essentially total.

Then something remarkable happened.

Hamas militants took sledgehammers and explosives to the barrier wall separating Gaza from Egypt. They created openings. And hundreds of thousands of Gazans—some estimates suggest as many as half the Strip's population—poured across the border into Egypt to buy food, fuel, and other goods that had become impossible to obtain.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, caught between pressure from Israel and the United States on one side and images of desperate civilians on the other, temporarily allowed the breach to continue before moving to reseal the border. It was a rare moment when the blockade physically cracked.

Life Under Siege

Statistics can numb us to human reality, but some numbers cut through. During the Second Intifada, when Israel intensified its blockade of the Palestinian territories, unemployment in Gaza reached 85 percent. The charity Christian Aid reported that child malnutrition doubled in a single year.

Truck transits tell another part of the story. In 2005, before the Hamas takeover, 12,000 trucks per month crossed into Gaza. By November 2007, that number had dropped to 2,000. Then food supplies were halved. Fuel imports were slashed. Foreign currency was restricted.

Egypt largely sealed its side of the border too, fearing that Hamas-style militancy might spill into its territory. Egyptian authorities were also concerned about Iran establishing a presence through Hezbollah—concerns that were validated when Egypt uncovered an alleged Hezbollah plot in 2009.

For ordinary Gazans, even the most basic activities became impossible. The Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank and controlled by Hamas's rival Fatah, stopped issuing passports to Gaza residents after June 2008. Without passports, tens of thousands of Palestinians couldn't travel abroad at all.

The Tunnels

When legal routes close, illegal ones open.

By 2009, hundreds of smuggling tunnels ran beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt. Through these tunnels flowed everything the blockade tried to stop: consumer goods, construction materials, weapons, and fuel. At their peak, the tunnels employed thousands of workers and formed a significant part of Gaza's economy.

Egypt responded by building an underground barrier—a steel wall extending deep into the earth, designed to cut through and collapse the tunnels. By 2013, most were destroyed.

But the tunnels revealed something important about blockades: they don't actually stop things from entering a territory. They just make entry more expensive, more dangerous, and more controlled by whoever runs the smuggling networks. In Gaza's case, that meant Hamas.

Who Controls What?

To understand Gaza's isolation, you need to understand its geography.

Gaza is a strip of land about 25 miles long and 6 miles wide at its widest point. It has a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea. It shares a short border with Egypt and a longer one with Israel. That's it. There are no other neighbors, no other options.

There are only three ways to legally leave Gaza. Two crossings are controlled by Israel: Erez, for people, and Kerem Shalom, for goods. One crossing—Rafah—is controlled by Egypt.

But even Rafah isn't independent of Israeli influence. Israel controls Gaza's population registry, which means it controls who can obtain the identity documents and travel permits required to cross at Rafah. Israel also coordinates closely with Egyptian military and security forces on border policy.

Exit by sea is prohibited. Gaza has a coastline, but no functioning port. Fishermen can venture only a few miles offshore—the exact distance varies depending on Israeli restrictions at any given time—before risking being fired upon by the Israeli navy. The fishing zone has at times been as narrow as three nautical miles.

Exit by air is prohibited. Gaza once had an international airport, opened in 1998 with great fanfare. Israel destroyed its radar station and runway during the Second Intifada. It has never been rebuilt.

The Dual-Use Dilemma

One of the most contentious aspects of the blockade involves something called "dual-use" items—goods that have legitimate civilian purposes but could also be used for military applications.

Cement, for example, can build houses. It can also build tunnels and bunkers. Metal pipes can carry water. They can also be fashioned into rockets. Computer equipment can run businesses and schools. It can also guide weapons.

Israel restricts or prohibits many dual-use items from entering Gaza. When such items are allowed, it's typically only as part of internationally supervised donor projects, with strict accounting for every bag of cement and every length of pipe.

The result is that even when donor nations want to rebuild Gaza—after each round of conflict destroys more infrastructure—the reconstruction moves at a crawl. Hospitals can't get medical equipment classified as dual-use. Schools can't get computers without extensive vetting. Ordinary families can't buy materials to repair their homes.

Export restrictions may be even more economically devastating. Israel bans virtually all exports from Gaza. This isn't primarily a security measure—it's difficult to smuggle weapons out of a territory. Israeli security officials have acknowledged that the export ban is a "political decision" meant to separate Gaza economically from the West Bank.

What does it mean for an economy when nothing can be sold to the outside world? It means no export industries. No foreign customers. No foreign currency earnings. Complete dependence on whatever aid and imports are allowed through the blockade. It means economic collapse by design.

The Legal Questions

Is the blockade legal?

The honest answer is that no court has definitively ruled on the question. The blockade's legality remains technically unadjudicated.

But human rights organizations have consistently argued that if the question were ever properly adjudicated, the blockade would be found illegal. Their reasoning centers on several principles of international law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment—punishing an entire population for the actions of some. Critics argue that restricting food, fuel, and medicine to two million people because of Hamas's actions is precisely this kind of collective punishment.

International law also requires occupying powers to ensure the welfare of occupied populations. Israel disputes that it still "occupies" Gaza after the 2005 withdrawal, but most legal experts and the United Nations still consider Israel the occupying power because of the extensive control it exercises over Gaza's borders, airspace, coastline, and population registry.

Israel's position is that the blockade is a legitimate security measure. Hamas fires rockets at Israeli towns. Hamas builds tunnels to infiltrate Israeli territory. Hamas has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks. Israel argues it has the right to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas and to exert pressure on a hostile entity.

Both arguments contain truth. Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, and the European Union. It has killed Israeli civilians. It does seek to acquire weapons. And Israel does have security concerns.

But the scope of the blockade extends far beyond weapons. When you ban pasta (as Israel did until 2010, classifying it as a luxury item), when you calculate the minimum calories needed to prevent starvation and allow exactly that much food, when you prevent children from leaving for medical treatment abroad, when you ban exports of strawberries and textiles and furniture—the security justification becomes harder to sustain.

Broken Promises

Israel has repeatedly agreed to ease the blockade as part of various ceasefire agreements. And repeatedly, according to critics, it has failed to follow through.

"Crossings were repeatedly shut and buffer zones were reinstated. Imports declined, exports were blocked, and fewer Gazans were given exit permits to Israel and the West Bank."

This pattern—ceasefires that promise relief, followed by minimal actual change—has become one of the most frustrating aspects of the situation for Gazans and for international observers. Each ceasefire raises hopes. Each time, the fundamental restrictions remain in place.

The View from Above

Zoom out from the details and the larger picture becomes clear.

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Before the current war, it was home to over two million people in 140 square miles—roughly 14,000 people per square mile. For comparison, New York City's density is about 27,000 people per square mile, but Manhattan alone reaches 70,000. Gaza isn't quite Manhattan, but it's in that territory.

Now imagine that density with 85 percent unemployment. With hospitals that can't get equipment. With fishermen who can't fish. With farmers who can't export. With students who can't study abroad. With the sick who can't travel for treatment.

Imagine this for seventeen years.

The blockade has created a situation with no obvious solution. Israel has legitimate security concerns—Hamas really does fire rockets and dig tunnels and plan attacks. But the blockade hasn't stopped Hamas. If anything, by devastating Gaza's economy and radicalizing its population, the blockade may have strengthened Hamas's position as the only organization capable of pushing back.

Egypt has its own concerns about Hamas-style Islamism spreading into the Sinai Peninsula and beyond. It has no desire to absorb Gaza's problems.

The international community condemns the blockade but takes no effective action to end it.

And ordinary Gazans—the two million people who didn't choose Hamas, who didn't fire any rockets, who just want to live their lives—remain trapped in the world's largest open-air prison.

A Note on What Comes Next

This essay describes the blockade as it existed before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza. The current war has changed everything and nothing. The fundamental dynamics—Israeli security concerns, Hamas's control of Gaza, Egyptian border policy, international condemnation without action—remain in place. But the scale of destruction has made even the blockade's restrictions seem almost quaint by comparison.

What happens next is unclear. What is clear is that the blockade, in some form, has defined life in Gaza for nearly two decades. It has shaped an entire generation. It has created conditions that, while they do not justify terrorism, help explain why it persists. And it shows no signs of ending.

The open-air prison remains open, and it remains a prison.