Did Palestinians live in the Gaza strip prior to 1967?
Executive summary
Yes — Palestinians were the primary inhabitants of the Gaza Strip long before 1967: Gaza was part of Ottoman and then British Mandate Palestine, contained Palestinian towns and districts, and became home to large numbers of Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war; it remained populated by Palestinians under Egyptian administration until Israel captured it in the 1967 Six-Day War [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Gaza’s pre-1948 identity: a Palestinian district under successive rulers
The area known today as the Gaza Strip was historically one of the districts of Mandate Palestine and had an indigenous Palestinian Arab population before 1948, carrying on local social and administrative life under Ottoman rule and then British mandate administration [1] [2]; contemporary summaries by Reuters and encyclopedias trace Gaza’s governance through Ottoman, British, and later Egyptian control, underscoring that Palestinians were the established inhabitants of the district prior to the upheavals of 1948 [5] [3].
2. The Nakba and Gaza’s transformation into a refuge for Palestinians
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War produced mass displacement — commonly called the Nakba — when several hundred thousand Palestinians fled or were expelled from areas that became Israel and many settled in Gaza, with estimates of roughly 160,000–190,000 arriving there in 1948 and thereafter, transforming the strip into a densely populated refuge zone and creating long-standing refugee camps [2] [6] [4] [7].
3. Egyptian administration, statelessness, and UN involvement (1949–1967)
From the end of the 1948 war until 1967 the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military rule, during which many Palestinians in Gaza remained stateless or were issued Egyptian travel documents and relied increasingly on international aid agencies such as UNRWA to provide services to refugees — a pattern that persisted into later decades [3] [6] [7] [2].
4. 1967 and the shift to Israeli occupation — what changed, and what didn’t
In the June 1967 Six-Day War Israel seized the Gaza Strip from Egyptian control and began military administration over a population that was overwhelmingly Palestinian, many of whom were refugees or descendants of refugees from 1948; Israel’s occupation altered governance and settlement patterns but did not create a sudden Palestinian presence where none had existed before 1967 [2] [8] [4] [9].
5. Population continuity and the roots of contemporary claims
Contemporary accounts and historical overviews note that the majority of Gaza’s post‑1948 and pre‑1967 population were Palestinians — including original refugees and their descendants — and that these demographic realities underpin present-day Palestinian claims to Gaza and the international framing of Gaza as part of the occupied Palestinian territories after 1967 [4] [6] [9] [10].
6. Alternate framings and implicit agendas to watch for in sources
Different sources emphasize different dimensions: humanitarian outlets stress refugee suffering and UNRWA’s role [2] [7], academic and historical references underline pre-1948 Palestinian residency and administrative continuity [1] [3], while political commentaries and some Israeli-focused narratives highlight security, settlement policies after 1967, or strategic thinking within Israeli leadership — all of which can shift attention away from the simple demographic fact that Palestinians lived in Gaza prior to 1967 [9] [2]. Readers should note that phrases like “occupation” or “reservations” carry political weight and reflect the vantage point of particular institutions or commentators [6] [9].
Conclusion
The historical record in news, reference and archival sources shows clear continuity: Palestinians were the established inhabitants of the Gaza district before 1948, became a larger refugee population there after the Nakba, lived under Egyptian administration from 1949 until 1967, and remained the principal residents when Israel captured Gaza in the Six‑Day War in 1967 — meaning the answer to whether Palestinians lived in Gaza prior to 1967 is an unequivocal yes, with nuance residing in questions of legal status, governance and displacement that followed those years [1] [4] [3] [8] [2].