Yumna Zahid Ali challenges the narrative that Oct. 7 marks the start of the Gaza conflict. It details a continuous timeline of control, siege, and violence dating back to 1948.
by Yumna Zahid Ali, Guest Commentator
The war did not begin on October 7, 2023, no matter how loudly that date is repeated to erase the long history of occupation and conflict that came before it. October 7 is used as a license to forget, a convenient starting line that allows seventy-five years of dispossession, occupation, siege, and repeated military assaults to be reduced to historical ash. But the testimonies of the oppressed do not work that way.
Wars do not begin when the powerful decide to start counting; they begin when people are uprooted from their land, dignity, safety, and any right to futurity, and Gaza’s story begins in 1948, not in 2023.
In 1948, during what Palestinians call Al-Nakba, or “The Catastrophe,” the creation of the State of Israel came with the forced displacement of at least 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral land. Entire villages were cleared, homes demolished or seized, and families sent into exile under the illusion that it was only for a short time. It was not. Those refugees were never allowed to return, and Gaza became one of the places where their descendants were compressed into a narrow strip of land where loss was perpetuated, not remembered. When Gaza is bombed today, it is not just a city under fire; it is a refugee camp built on an unresolved crime.
... a diplomatic solution over time revealed itself as management of the conflict rather than its resolution, breeding disillusionment instead of reconciliation.
In 1967, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip following the Six-Day War, placing its population under military rule and control. From that moment forward, Gaza’s residents did not control their borders, their airspace, or their freedom of movement. Daily life was regulated by an occupying power that could decide who traveled, who entered, who passed through a checkpoint, who received medicine, and who would have their name crossed out. This was not a temporary emergency measure; it was the normalization of domination, and it hardened a sense of injustice, not because Palestinians rejected peace, but because they were never offered freedom.
By 1987, that pressure escalated into the First Intifada, a mass uprising driven largely by civilians who used protests, strikes, and civil disobedience to confront decades of occupation. It was not an armed invasion but a civilian-led revolt born from humiliation and dehumanization, and it was met with ferocious military force, mass arrests, beatings, and live ammunition. This was the state screaming its only truth: “We have the guns. Your justice is a fantasy. Obey.”
The 1990s brought the Oslo Accords, which were sold to the world as a peace process but felt to many Palestinians like an agreement to keep talking about…an agreement that would never come. While a Palestinian Authority was created, real sovereignty never followed, and Israel retained decisive control over borders, armed enforcement, and colonization. Settlement expansion continued in the West Bank, occupation remained intact, and Gaza was targeted for further degradation. What was presented as a diplomatic solution over time revealed itself as management of the conflict rather than its resolution, breeding disillusionment instead of reconciliation.
In 2005, Israel announced its unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza, withdrawing settlers and soldiers from inside the strip while keeping its chokehold over its airspace, territorial waters, population registry, and all land crossings. Gaza was not freed; it was sealed. Its people could not move, trade, or rebuild freely, and the territory became dependent on an occupying power that claimed it was no longer responsible while still maintaining a remote-controlled siege. This contradiction was the catalyst for what followed.
This was not an accidental escalation. It was a one-sided, deeply imbalanced war.
When Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006, Gaza was placed under a strangling blockade by Israel, with Egypt’s cooperation and Western backing. This was not a counter-terrorism operation; it was collective punishment imposed on over two million people, most of them civilians, many of them children still in diapers. The blockade crippled Gaza’s economy, restricted food, medicine, fuel, and construction materials, and trapped every last soul in a sealed enclosure. Despair deepened, and the world largely accepted it as necessary.
What followed were repeated military assaults that reinforced the reality of Gaza as a place where civilian life was expendable. In 2008–2009, Operation Cast Lead killed around 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, while Israel lost 13 people, several from friendly fire. In 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense left 167 Palestinians dead in just eight days. In 2014, Operation Protective Edge devastated Gaza over 51 days, killing more than 2,200 Palestinians, over 500 of them children, and flattening densely populated city quarters while Gaza remained shrink-wrapped and unable to shelter its people. Each assault cycled back to the same four words: ceasefire, rubble, blockade, trauma.
In 2018, Palestinians attempted a different form of resistance through the Great March of Return, where largely unarmed protesters demanded an end to the blockade and the restitution of their right of return to the homes dispossessed in 1948. They were quelled with sniper fire. Over 200 were killed, thousands were wounded, many were permanently disabled, and dozens of children were brutalized by bullets. Even the protest was treated as a threat to be eliminated rather than an appeal for humanity to be heeded.
The punitive pattern continued through May 2021 and August 2022, with further Israeli operations killing hundreds more Palestinians, including many children, while Gaza remained stranded, impoverished, and futureless. This was not an accidental escalation. It was a one-sided, deeply imbalanced war. One side owns the prison and writes the news. The other digs graves and waits to be bombed again.
To claim that the war began on October 7, 2023, is not an act of providing a complete picture; it is an act of distortion and falsification. It erases the refugee camps, the occupation, the blockade, the bombings, the crushed protests, and a childhood defined by sirens. It reframes history so that violence appears spontaneous rather than inevitable, detached rather than provoked. October 7 represents a critical node in a continuous historical sequence…one that begins not in 2023, but in 1948, with the foundational injustices that have defined the conflict ever since.
“You cannot bury seventy-five years of suffering under one date and then call it honesty.”
About the author ~
Yumna Zahid Ali is a writer and educator who spends her free time reading, analyzing literature, and exploring cultural and intellectual debates. When she’s not writing for global audiences, she enjoys reflecting on societal issues and using her voice to challenge inequities, especially those affecting women. She also loves diving into history, believing that remembering the past is an act of defiance and a way to hold power accountable.
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TAGS: Gaza war historical context, why Gaza conflict did not start October 7, Gaza history since 1948 opinion, Israel Palestine conflict long-term analysis, Gaza blockade and occupation explained
