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By: Fern Sidman
As the international community prepares for yet another round of United Nations debates on the recognition of a Palestinian state, historical evidence has resurfaced that fundamentally challenges the core of Palestinian claims to sovereignty over Gaza. According to findings recently highlighted by the Central European outlet Visegrad 24, documentation spanning more than three millennia demonstrates that Gaza has never, at any point in history, been under Palestinian control.
This revelation, which has been widely circulated and analyzed in Israeli media, including Israel Hayom, raises critical questions about the legitimacy of efforts to recognize Palestinian statehood over Gaza—a territory that has always existed under successive foreign rulers until Israel’s unilateral disengagement in 2005. The evidence not only recontextualizes the debate over sovereignty but also illustrates the risks of historical revisionism at the very moment international actors consider granting Palestinians what history has never conferred.
According to the comprehensive timeline published by Visegrad 24, and reiterated by Israel Hayom, Gaza’s earliest documented period of control belonged to the Kingdom of Israel (1047–930 BCE). The territory was at that time home to the Philistines, an ancient people often cited in biblical texts as Israel’s adversaries.
Yet, as the report at Israel Hayom noted, the Philistines vanished from history nearly 1,900 years ago, leaving no enduring ethnic or political identity. Their disappearance underscores the fact that no continuous line can be drawn from antiquity to the modern Palestinian identity. Instead, Gaza, along with much of the Levant, became a corridor of conquest, changing hands through successive empires that left their imprint but never fostered indigenous Palestinian sovereignty.
From the fall of the Kingdom of Israel through the first millennium of the Common Era, Gaza passed through the hands of some of history’s most formidable empires. Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian rulers successively claimed dominion, followed by the Hellenistic regimes after the conquests of Alexander the Great.
As the Israel Hayom report pointed out, Roman and later Byzantine administrations further entrenched the territory’s role as a frontier province of greater imperial systems rather than an autonomous state. In the medieval era, the Muslim conquests brought Gaza under the control of the early Islamic caliphates, followed by Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk rule, punctuated only by a century of Crusader occupation.
By the sixteenth century, Gaza had been absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, where it would remain until the empire’s defeat in World War I. At no point during these successive centuries did Gaza emerge as a sovereign entity governed by a people calling themselves Palestinians. As Israel Hayom observes, Gaza was always administered by external authorities, who used the territory for its strategic location rather than cultivating it as a seat of independent political power.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Gaza was subsumed into the British Mandate for Palestine, which encompassed the lands that would later become Israel and Jordan. Under the Mandate, Britain assumed administrative responsibility, yet there was no effort to establish a Palestinian sovereign entity in Gaza.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, the surrounding Arab states immediately launched a war of annihilation. In the aftermath of Israel’s survival, Gaza fell under Egyptian control, while Jordan seized the West Bank. Notably, as Israel Hayom has frequently reminded its readers, neither Egypt nor Jordan ever proposed Palestinian statehood during their nearly two decades of occupation.
Egypt administered Gaza as a military zone, refusing to integrate its population or extend citizenship. Even during the Camp David peace accords in 1979, Cairo notably declined to accept Gaza’s return alongside the Sinai Peninsula. As the Israel Hayom report recalled, during that period international figures such as Che Guevara visited Egyptian-controlled Gaza without ever advocating Palestinian independence.
The establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 marked the first time Palestinians formally organized under a national banner. Yet the PLO’s founding conference included Jordan’s unelected Hashemite king, signaling that its purpose was not sovereignty but rather the destruction of Israel.
The Israel Hayom report has pointedly noted that the PLO never sought a two-state solution. Instead, its doctrine centered on the elimination of Jewish sovereignty altogether. This orientation meant that even under foreign Arab occupation, Palestinians made no concerted effort to assert sovereignty over Gaza or Judea and Samaria. The territories were not seen as stepping stones to independence but as staging grounds for perpetual conflict.
The watershed moment came during the Six-Day War, when Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. For the first time in history, Palestinians began to articulate explicit territorial claims to lands that had never existed as independent states. As Israel Hayom emphasizes, the paradox was unmistakable: Palestinians claimed sovereignty only once Israel held these territories—not under the Arabs who had controlled them for decades prior.
This development highlights a central argument in the historical record: Palestinian statehood claims are inextricably reactive, defined not by indigenous sovereignty but by opposition to Israel’s existence.
The Oslo Accords of 1993 represented a historic turning point. For the first time, Palestinians were granted limited autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza under the Palestinian Authority (PA). As Israel Hayom underscores, this marked the first genuine instance in three millennia when Palestinians exercised a form of self-rule over any territory.
Yet even this unprecedented development was marred by corruption, violence, and the refusal of Palestinian leadership to renounce terrorism. The PA’s control in Gaza remained tenuous, constantly undermined by rival factions and militant organizations.
In 2005, Israel completed its unilateral disengagement from Gaza, dismantling every settlement and withdrawing all military installations. For the first time in history, Palestinians exercised unambiguous control over the strip.
As the report at Israel Hayom indicated, this experiment in Palestinian sovereignty culminated in the violent 2007 Hamas coup, which ousted the Palestinian Authority and established a regime committed not to governance but to perpetual war against Israel. Since then, Gaza has served as a launchpad for rockets, tunnels, and terrorism, illustrating that sovereignty without accountability can be catastrophic.
The Visegrad 24 investigation, cited widely by Israel Hayom, concluded that recognizing Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza today represents a reward for historical revisionism and terrorism rather than a correction of injustice. No historical precedent exists for Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza; its only independent governance emerged through Israel’s withdrawal—a move met with violence and radicalization.
As UN member states prepare to vote on Palestinian statehood recognition, this historical record poses a challenge: is international legitimacy to be granted on the basis of actual history, or on the perpetuation of myths designed to delegitimize Israel?
The Israel Hayom report argued that the current push for recognition is not about righting historical wrongs but about entrenching a political narrative that erases the complexities of the past.
The historical record spanning more than 3,000 years leaves little ambiguity: Gaza has never been an independent Palestinian entity. From ancient Israelite rule to successive empires, from Ottoman administration to Egyptian occupation, and finally under Israeli sovereignty, Gaza has always been controlled by external powers. Only in the aftermath of Israel’s withdrawal did Palestinians exercise sovereignty, and even then, it devolved into a Hamas-ruled enclave synonymous with terror and conflict.
Recognizing Palestinian statehood over Gaza would not correct an ancient injustice but instead enshrine a dangerous historical fiction. For the international community, the choice is stark: honor the lessons of history or succumb to the temptation of political expediency, rewarding revisionism and violence over truth and accountability.
