Understanding Gaza: A reflection on decades of failed policies and their lessons for the “day after” and beyond

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian armed groups launched a surprise attack on Israel’s southern border communities, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. In response, Israel retaliated by imposing a total closure of the territory and launching a massive air, sea, and land military campaign that, one year on, has resulted in a staggering human toll (more than 41,000 killed and over 96,000 injured) and laid much of the besieged strip to waste.

The devastating details of what has happened in Gaza since the war started have been widely covered by various media outlets and reported by United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with staff on the ground. Also known are the sheer scale and scope of the humanitarian crisis, the massive forced displacement, the spread of disease and hunger, the extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the near total breakdown of law and order. Proposed plans for the “day after” and the future of the coastal territory, drafted by a number of US think tanks, abound (see here, here, and here). Israel, the US, and the United Arab Emirates have outlined other ideas for “post-war” Gaza, while independent scholars and experts have pitched their own views as well (here and here).

Absent from the discussion, however, are questions about what led to the war in Gaza, what went wrong on the policy front, and, more importantly, whether this man-made tragedy could have been averted. Answers to these questions are glaringly lacking in the rush to produce post-war plans. Without understanding Gaza, however, and learning a few lessons in the process, these plans for the day after may very well result in the further mismanagement of the already devastated enclave — the same type of mismanagement that led to its ongoing destruction in the first place. If this were to happen, the price next time around would be even higher still, since it would involve dealing with a highly traumatized young population struggling to survive in a war-ravaged and increasingly uninhabitable landscape.

The Gaza question

Pre-war Gaza had a number of salient features that set it apart from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. Among them were: a high population density, with an estimated 2.3 million people squeezed into 365 square kilometers (141 square miles); a large number of UN-registered refugees, amounting to 70% of Gazans, the majority of whom lived in eight overcrowded and squalid UN-serviced refugee camps; a population that was increasing annually by 2.8% — among the highest growth rates in the world, with nearly 50% under the age of 18; and a fast-growing labor force, with new entrants to the job market joining long unemployment lines in a small and virtually broken economy.

High rates of joblessness, especially among youth (60%) and women (64%), widespread poverty (64%), and severe food insecurity (41%) produced extremely dire living conditions, rendering 80% of Gaza residents dependent on humanitarian aid for survival. Dilapidated infrastructure, environmental degradation, institutional decay, and chronic shortages in electricity and potable water added further strains. The severity of conditions in Gaza twice led the UN, in 2012 and again in 2015, to warn that if nothing was done to reverse course, the whole place would become unlivable by the year 2020.

That was Gaza before Oct. 7.

Gaza’s misfortune, however, did not start with the armed takeover of the coastal enclave by Hamas in June 2007 — rather, it started four decades earlier, in June 1967, and it has been growing ever since. Whether under direct Israeli military occupation (1967-1994), Palestinian Authority (PA) administration (1994-2007), or de facto Hamas control after 2007, a toxic combination of neglect, restrictions, and mismanagement contributed to produce an untenable and highly combustible situation that was bound to explode. In fact, the situation did explode several times, with the eruption of the first and the second intifadas in 1987 and 2000; the outbreak of three wars between Israel and Hamas in 2008/09, 2012, and 2014; and a limited conflict in 2021 with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Then came the big one: Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli occupation

Under direct military occupation from 1967 to 1994, Gaza was highly dependent on Israel for jobs and trade, with workers employed inside Israel amounting to 40% of the Gazan workforce and remittances accounting for one-third of Gaza’s total output. Per capita incomes more than doubled during the period.

There was, however, a downside to this as these income gains were not internally generated but mostly originated from external sources, including from the oil-rich Gulf region. To the detriment of Gaza, these high earnings were not translated into productive private investment or, in the case of the taxes collected by Israel, used to finance public investment that was needed to expand basic infrastructure. Such investment, if it had occurred, could have engendered local growth that would have, over time, provided a steady and sustained source of jobs and incomes for the rapidly growing population, gradually reduced its dependence on Israel, and, in the process, established an economic foundation for a future political settlement of the conflict.

That this did not happen had largely to do with Israeli restrictions on domestic investment and access to natural resources. As a result, by the beginning of the 1990s, Gaza was largely underdeveloped and heavily dependent on Israel. The high cost of 25 years of restrictions and neglect was made excruciatingly clear by a number of internal and external adverse shocks that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the outbreak of the first intifada, the negative impact of the first Gulf War on remittances from Gaza expatriates, and the slowdown in demand for Gazan labor in Israel.

That said, Gaza was soon to enter a new phase in a completely different political setting with the September 1993 signing of the “Declaration of Principles,” commonly known as the Oslo Accords, between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which, among other things, led to the creation of the PA.

Palestinian Authority rule

During the PA’s 13-year administration of Gaza, three major developments took place. First was the provision of $2.4 billion in international aid over the 1994-1999 interim period to help build governing institutions and revive the Palestinian economy. Second was the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000. Third was the unexpected announcement by Israel, in December 2003, of a unilateral disengagement from Gaza, completed in 2005. While international assistance helped to build the PA’s public institutions and expand basic infrastructure, the second intifada led to the destruction of much of what was created. The Israeli decision to leave Gaza, on the other hand, eventually opened the door for the Hamas takeover, unceremoniously ending the PA’s tenuous control there.

The signing of the Oslo Accords, with their overriding emphasis on security, did not provide a setting conducive to building a different future for the enclave. Under the terms of the agreements, Israel continued to retain exclusive control over external security and all entry and exit points to and from the strip. Furthermore, none of the 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza were evacuated, and close to 30% of the territory remained under Israeli military control.

This decidedly unfavorable context was exacerbated by the deterioration in security conditions following a series of suicide bombings against civilian targets inside Israel in the mid-1990s as well as the subsequent tightening of Israeli constraints on the mobility of Palestinian people and trade. This restrictive political and security environment resulted in a decline in living standards despite the disbursement of significant amounts of international aid. Incidents of PA corruption, embezzlement of public funds, and monopoly control by PA-affiliated commercial entities made things worse, and further frustrated hopes for a better future.

Following the collapse of last-ditch US efforts to achieve an agreement between Israel and the PLO at the July 2000 Camp David summit and the eruption of the second intifada, armed confrontation and violence quickly dominated the scene. As noted above, Israel eventually decided to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, completing its evacuation by September 2005.

Hamas control

The Israeli departure from Gaza was viewed by Hamas as a “victory of the resistance” (intisar al-muqawama) that managed to liberate Gaza. The fact that the unilateral Israeli act was not a complete one mattered little to Hamas (after disengagement, Israel continued to retain control over Gaza’s air space, territorial waters, population registry, and the exit/entry points of goods and people — except for the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which was monitored by a European Union mission). There were several international attempts to make disengagement work by delivering economic benefits to Gaza, including World Bank technical studies on borders and trade, the appointment of a special envoy for Gaza disengagement, the US-brokered “Agreement on Movement and Access” between Israel and the PA to open Gaza to the outside world, and a number of private initiatives for agriculture and industrial projects.

Four months after disengagement, Hamas took part in the Palestinian legislative elections of January 2006, which it ultimately won, taking everyone by surprise. Following Hamas’ victory, it did not take long for these international efforts to reach a dead end. With Hamas’ rise to power, the adverse response by Israel and Western countries to the unexpected developments on the Palestinian political scene, and Hamas’ armed takeover of the enclave in mid-2007, the situation was deemed hopeless, and it has been all downhill for Gaza since then.

Over the 16-year period that followed, three conflict-related shocks prevented further progress in Gaza. First, the Palestinian entity was divided, both politically and geographically, with the Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas and the Fatah-run PA governing parts of the West Bank, with no effective coordination or physical connection between them. Second, Israel imposed a crippling economic blockade. Third, Israel launched four military operations (in 2008/09, 2012, 2014, and 2021) in the context of continued military build-up and frequent firing of rockets at Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Collectively, these shocks crippled Gaza’s private sector, disrupted the provision of basic public services, and further worsened socioeconomic conditions, while cementing Hamas’ grip on power.

Failing Gaza

And so, on the eve of Oct. 7, the picture in Gaza — a direct product of over five decades of neglect, restrictions, and periodic violence — looked bleak, while the immediate parties to the enclave’s misfortunes (Israel, the PA, and Hamas) and the international community (especially the US and the EU) seemed content with managing Gaza and uninterested in making a serious effort to bring about real change in the lives of the 2.3 million impoverished people trapped there.

Israel, on the one hand, found itself in its preferred comfort zone: satisfied with managing the Gaza question through an economic blockade; intermittently conducting military operations against Hamas to “mow the lawn” and weaken the Islamists’ fighting capabilities; and at times easing its severe restrictions to allow Gaza breathing space, but with no urgency to politically address the root causes of its predicament — an unsustainable containment strategy as Oct. 7 has shown. The Palestinians, on the other hand, were busy with their never-ending internal bickering, exchanging recriminations for failing to reach a reconciliation pact to end their 16-year-long political division, or to agree on a workable modus vivendi to pull Gaza back from its rapid descent into the abyss. And the West, while continuing to provide desperately needed (if inadequate) aid to meet basic humanitarian requirements, seemed too fatigued or too busy focusing on other domestic, regional, and international crises to play a more assertive political role in helping to bring an end to the calamity in Gaza.

With such a short-sighted approach, an explosion was all but inevitable. And the irony of it all is that while Gaza has often been described as a “ticking time bomb,” little was done to defuse it.

Gaza lessons

Reflecting on the 56-year period when Gaza was governed by three different regimes, one finds that, during each one of them, there was an opportunity for the strip to develop and grow. That potential, however, has been tragically and myopically denied or squandered, leaving in its stead festering misery and anger. Not surprisingly, each one of these three episodes ended in violence. The first intifada ended Israel’s direct military presence in Gaza, except in the 21 Jewish settlements there (later evacuated in 2005); the second intifada and armed takeover of Gaza by Hamas ended the PA’s rule there; and the current year-long war, in all likelihood, will end Hamas’ 16-year de facto control over the vastly ruined and desperate enclave.

Gaza teaches us four hard lessons:

1. Leaving Gaza to rot in poverty and hopelessness while Israel grows and prospers is a bad policy. Consider this: trendy Tel Aviv is only 45 miles north of the Gaza ghetto. This is politically unsustainable.

2. Technical solutions without a conducive political setting — one that deals with the underlying political root causes of the conflict — are inadequate to address conflict-induced socioeconomic challenges. By themselves, these solutions are ineffective and do not constitute an efficient use of time and resources.

3. Managing Gaza in a silo outside the wider Israeli-Palestinian context, including Israel’s ongoing occupation of West Bank and East Jerusalem, does not work, and, over time, makes things far worse and more complicated.

4. What happens in Gaza does not stay in Gaza, and has wider regional reverberations (think Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran).

Taken together, these lessons should have constituted the pillars on which a coherent long-term vision for pre-war Gaza was based — one that goes beyond short-term technical fixes and stopgap remedies to address the underlying politically rooted socioeconomic challenges; one that incorporates the rest of Palestine as a unified territory in peace with all its neighbors; and one that is strategically embedded in a broader framework of regional cooperation, economic integration, and political inclusion. For all of the reasons explained earlier, that did not happen.

These painful lessons should also help guide thinking about and planning for post-war Gaza and serve as a basis against which all such planning should be measured. Learning from past mistakes is always wise. Repeating them in light of today’s apocalyptic situation in Gaza is a recipe for an enduring conflict.

Governing Gaza

A year into the war, it is still unclear when the carnage will end, what kind of Gaza will emerge in its aftermath, and, more importantly, who will run the ruined enclave the day after. Various scenarios have projected different outlooks for post-war Gaza; all are grim but plausible. In one scenario, Gaza could be reduced to a squalid supercamp of internally displaced persons, completely dependent on international aid, run by gangs, and with no central government (like al-Hol in Syria). In another scenario, Gaza remains a rubble-ridden set of tent camps policed by the Israeli military that continues to battle Hamas and other armed groups more or less indefinitely. A third scenario expects Gaza to continue, for years, to be an utter humanitarian disaster with no effective governance, just a Mad Max patchwork of Hamas, local families, gangs, and aid agencies. The Economist magazine, in an even more gloomy scenario, projects an anarchic and largely lawless Gaza becoming a Mogadishu on the Mediterranean, controlled by warlords, with Israel re-occupying parts of the territory.

These scenarios portend an open-ended war in Gaza. Preventing such an outcome, and saving Gaza from descending into anarchy, should be the central goal of any post-war plan designed to run the embattled enclave — the reason why such a plan should be carefully thought out. While proposed solutions for the day after are many and varied, no single model has emerged as a clear and credible pathway forward for governing and rebuilding Gaza. Even the three-phase cease-fire plan announced by the US on May 31, 2024, was conspicuously silent on who will administer post-war Gaza or how.

Designing a “day after” plan for Gaza is not an easy exercise. With so many players actively involved in shaping the war’s outcome, so many vested interests in Gaza’s future, and so many variables dominating the equation, the stakes are extremely high. And yet, a workable solution must be found in order to respond, effectively and rapidly, to the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, and to ultimately help position this devastated territory and its people on the long road to recovery and reconstruction. International experience in post-conflict management could provide a useful guide, but Gaza is a special case, a “handle-with-care” case. If bungled, it could have disastrous, and entirely unforeseen, consequences for years to come.

Special thanks to Khaled Elgindy, Brian Katulis, and Mouin Rabbani for their comments on an earlier draft.

Mohammed Samhouri is a Washington-based Palestinian economist. He is a former senior economic advisor in the Palestinian Authority and a former senior research and teaching fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. In 2005, he led a team of 40 Palestinian technical experts to prepare Gaza for the day after Israeli disengagement. He is the author of the 2017 UNDP-commissioned report “Beyond Survival: Challenges to Economic Recovery and Long-Term Development in the Gaza Strip.” Follow him @msamhouri

Photo by Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images