Gaza: The Long Road to Destruction, 1870-2024

Gaza has been described as the world's largest prison. Israel's current war, sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack, has horrified the world, costing more than 40,000 Palestinian lives, mostly women and children. According to Amnesty, Israel has 'committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention'. But history didn't begin on October 7 - or 1967 or even 1948. There is a long-brewing backstory to this tragic conflict often missed by the media. Journalist Sarah Helm's in-depth and revelatory new history uncovers the long history of Gaza: its time under Ottoman rule, the mapping of the territory by British colonial surveyors, the arrival of the first Jewish settlers escaping persecution in Europe as well as the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 200,000 refugees into the Strip. Based on multiple interviews with the survivors of the 1948 Nakba and their relatives, and accounts from the earliest explorers and settlers, the book offers a revelatory account of the origins of a conflict that seven decades on remains a blot on the conscience of the world.