The Israeli permit regime in the Gaza Strip is the legal regime that requires Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to obtain a number of separate permits from the military authorities of Israel, their legal occupiers from 1967 to 2005.
Israeli work permits allow pass holders to work in Israel or its occupied territories [1] where wages are significantly higher than in Gaza, which has been under a blockade by Israel and Egypt since Islamist militant group Hamas has gained power in the region. [2]
Israeli authorities, including the Ministry of Defense, view the scheme as a means of keeping peaceful relations; [3] [4] critics view the scheme as a form of coercive control. [5] Israel also operates a similar permit regime in the West Bank. [2] The Associated Press notes that this is used for leverage by Israel, who know that the violent actions of Hamas are going to be blamed for Gazans losing their work permits. [2]
When Hamas seized power of the Gaza Strip in 2007, 120,000 Gazans who worked inside Israel had their passes revoked. [2] In recent years, Israel has allowed thousands of Gaza Palestinians to work within its borders. In 2021, 7,000 Gazans held Israeli work or trade permits. In 2022, the permit quota was raised to 17,000, with a planned increase to 20,000. [6] The wages earned in Israel are significantly higher than what’s available within Gaza. For example, one permit holder mentioned that one month of work in Israel equals three years of work in Gaza. [2] In September 2023, approximately 18,000 Gazans had Israeli work permits, which provided a cash injection of $2 million a day to Gaza's economy. [7]
Following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, Gazans in Israel on work permits were unable to return to Gaza after they were revoked by Israeli authorities. [8] [9] Some were detained by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) or other Israeli authorities in the West Bank [10] while others were deported to that territory. [11]
The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. Inhabited by mostly Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Gaza is one of the most densely populated territories in the world. Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north.
The Gaza–Israel barrier is a border barrier located on the Israeli side of the Gaza–Israel border. Before the Israel–Hamas war, the Erez Crossing, in the north of the Gaza Strip, used to be the only crossing point for people and goods coming from Israel into the Gaza Strip, with a second crossing point, the Kerem Shalom border crossing, used exclusively for goods coming from Egypt, as Israel didn't allow goods to go directly from Egypt into Gaza through the Egypt–Gaza border, except for the Salah Al Din Gate, opened in 2018.
This page is a partial listing of incidents of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2005.
The state of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is determined by Palestinian as well as Israeli policies, which affect Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories both directly and indirectly, through their influence over the Palestinian Authority (PA). Based on The Economist Democracy Index this state is classified as an authoritarian regime.
The Erez Crossing, also known as the Beit Hanoun Crossing, is a border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel. It is located at the northern end of the Gaza Strip, between the Israeli kibbutz of Erez and the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun.
The economy of the Gaza Strip was dependent on small industries and agriculture. After years of decline, the Gaza economy experienced some growth in the late 2000s, boosted by foreign aid. According to the International Monetary Fund, the economy grew 20 percent in 2011, and the per capita gross domestic product increased by 19 percent.
Vittorio Arrigoni was an Italian journalist and activist. He worked with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM), through which he arrived in the Gaza Strip in 2008. He maintained a website called Guerrilla Radio and also published a book about his experiences in Gaza City during the 2008–2009 Gaza War between Hamas and Israel. In 2011, he was abducted and murdered by a group of Salafi jihadists. The Hamas government, which identified the perpetrators as Palestinian and Jordanian affiliates of al-Qaeda, subsequently initiated a manhunt and arrested the accused suspects during a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Arrigoni was the first foreign national to have been involved in such an incident in the Gaza Strip since the kidnapping of British journalist Alan Johnston in 2007.
In November 2012, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched Operation Pillar of Defense, which was an eight-day campaign in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, beginning on 14 November 2012 with the killing of Ahmed Jabari, chief of the Gaza military wing of Hamas, by an Israeli airstrike.
Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip in Palestine since its takeover of the region from rival party Fatah in June 2007. Hamas' government was led by Ismail Haniyeh from 2007 until February 2017, when Haniyeh was replaced as leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip by Yahya Sinwar. As of November 2023, Yahya Sinwar continues to be the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In January 2024, due to the ongoing Israel–Hamas war, Israel said that Hamas lost control of most of the northern part of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, Hamas regrouped in the north.
Restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories by Israel is an issue in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. According to B'Tselem, following the 1967 war, the occupied territories were proclaimed closed military zones. In 1972, general exit orders were issued allowing residents of those territories to move freely between the West Bank, Israel and the Gaza Strip. Following the First Intifada by 1991, the general exit orders were revoked, and personal exit permits were required. According to B'Tselem, a measure of overall closure of the territories was enacted for the first time in 1993, and would result in total closures following rises in Palestinian political violence.
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, and Battle of the Withered Grain, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been governed by Hamas since 2007. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated Operation Brother's Keeper, in which it killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and imprisoned more than 600. Hamas subsequently fired a greater number of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, triggering a seven-week-long conflict between the two sides. It was one of the deadliest outbreaks of open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in decades. The combination of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes resulted in over two thousand deaths, the vast majority of which were Gazan Palestinians. This includes a total of six Israeli civilians who were killed as a result of the conflict.
Palestinian workers in Israel are Palestinian citizens of the Palestinian Authority who are employed by Israeli citizens in the State of Israel and Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Most of them work as unskilled laborers in sectors such as agriculture and construction.
Mass civilian casualties of Israeli bombing, shelling and rocket attacks on the Gaza Strip have occurred in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in which Israeli bombing attacks on the Gaza Strip cause numerous civilian fatalities. The reason for such operations is purportedly to carry out targeted assassinations of militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups seen to be a threat to Israel, whose Shin Bet data banks monitor thousands of Palestinians for targeting. Israel regards such cases as either unfortunate errors, the consequence of civilians being used to shield militants, or as acceptable collateral damage.
Rami Aman is a Palestinian journalist and peace activist in the Gaza Strip. Aman founded the Gaza Youth Committee, through which since 2015 Aman has been organizing small-scale video chats between Israelis and Palestinian peace activists in the Gaza Strip in an initiative called "Skype With Your Enemy." On 9 April 2020, Aman was arrested by Hamas at the Internal Security headquarters in Gaza City. He was charged with "weakening revolutionary spirit" for his role in organizing the April 2020 video call with Israelis. He was released in October 2020.
The year 2023 in Israel was defined first by wide-scale protests against a proposed judicial reform, and then by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, which led to a war and to Israel invading the Gaza Strip.
Since the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war on October 7, 2023, Israel has carried out mass arrests and detentions of Palestinians. Thousands have been arrested in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel, based on alleged militant activity, offensive social media postings, or arbitrarily.
The 2023 Israel–Hamas war led to an intensive interrogation program by Israeli intelligence agencies, particularly Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet and IDF's Unit 504, targeting captured "Hamas militants". Following the sudden attack on 7 October, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis, alleged militants were captured in Israel. Israel has claimed that the interrogation of the suspects revealed significant insights into the group's strategies, ideologies, and operational methods that played a crucial role in Israel's military response and in shaping the global understanding of the conflict.
The We Want to Live movement is a grassroots youth movement in the Gaza Strip calling for increased economic opportunity and the removal of Hamas from power. The movement was founded in March 2019, giving rise to the 2019 Gaza economic protests. It is not connected to any one political party, and some sources have connected the movement to the Arab Spring of the early 2010s.
During the Israel–Hamas war, Israel has systematically tortured Palestinians detained in its prison system. This torture has been reported by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as Israeli nonprofit human rights organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights Israel and B'Tselem.
The background to the ongoing Israel–Hamas war focusing on key events from 1967 to 2023, including occupation, the rise of Hamas, multiple military confrontations, economic hardships in Gaza, and the lead-up to the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.