A Very Short History of Gaza

A vital history of Gaza from Antiquity to the present – defying Israel's attempts to erase its heritage Today Gaza lies in ruins after a genocide perpetrated before our eyes. Over 80% of its buildings have been destroyed, and its people have suffered the worst horrors imaginable. For over twenty years it has been an open-air prison. But once Gaza was an integral part of the Arab and Eastern Mediterranean world, where merchants traded their goods, and intellectual and religious life flourished, across all three Abrahamic faiths. Empires as diverse as the Persians, Romans, Mamluks and Ottomans vied to control it – and its silks, fruits and wines were renowned. Ilan Pappe tells the story of Gaza from Roman rule to the present, revealing the indomitable spirit of Gaza’s people and the possibility for a more just future in a free Palestine.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is also the author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge), The Modern Middle East (Routledge), The Israel/Palestine Question (Routledge), The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale), The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (Verso) and with Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians (Penguin). He writes for, among others, the Guardian and the London Review of Books.