The Gaza Strip

Strategically located on the Mediterranean’s eastern shores, Gaza was always in a prime position on the trade routes from Eurasia to Africa. Its ports made it a regional hub for commerce and culture. Since at least 1300 BC, the Via Maris – a route running from Heliopolis in ancient Egypt, cutting across Gaza’s western coastline and then crossing into Syrian lands – was the main route that travellers would take on their journeys to Damascus.

Empires – including the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians and Romans – have come and gone, at times dominating the land of the Canaanites, the ancestors of the Palestinians, leaving relics of their own cultural heritage behind. Greeks, Jews, Persians and Nabateans have also lived along this stretch of coast over the centuries.

Napoleon seized the ancient port city of Gaza from Ottoman Empire forces with little resistance in February 1799, having marched through the Sinai desert after British admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed his fleet.

Gaza had long been a center for honey, oil and agriculture, and a strategic point between Asia and Europe.

Napoleon wrote that Gaza’s hills, covered with “forests of olive trees,” reminded him of Languedoc in southern France. Two centuries on, those groves have given way to a forest of concrete.

Gaza also saw fighting between Ottoman forces and Allied forces in World War One.

The Gaza War Cemetery contains 3,217 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 781 of them unidentified. There was also fighting in Gaza during the Second World War and there are 210 Allied burials here

Over the last century Gaza passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by around 2.3 million Palestinians, most of them refugees.

The Israeli – Hamas war which started in October 2023 has resulted in the most complete destruction of the enclave in its long history .

Destination – North Africa and the Middle East

Related story: Gaza: The Road to Ruin