The Conflict, Documented
The Gaza Blockade in Facts
Since 2007 Israel and Egypt have restricted movement in and out of Gaza. What the blockade covers, and how each side argues it.
The word blockade appears in every argument about Gaza and is rarely unpacked. In documented terms it names a regime of restrictions, imposed by Israel and Egypt since 2007, on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip: control of the crossings, a naval closure, a restricted fishing zone and a goods regime that has changed repeatedly. This explainer records what the restrictions cover and how each side argues them, with dates.
What happened in 2007
In June 2007 Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, eighteen months after winning the Palestinian legislative election and months after a unity arrangement collapsed into factional fighting. Israel and Egypt responded by closing the territory's crossings to most movement, and Israel declared Gaza a hostile entity that September. The stated Israeli position, repeated in official documentation since, is that the restrictions exist to prevent weapons and materials reaching Hamas; Egypt's parallel closure of the Rafah crossing followed the same stated logic plus its own disputes with Hamas.
What the restrictions cover
On land, Gaza has three crossings: Kerem Shalom for goods, Erez for people, and Rafah to Egypt. Israel's regime has at different periods limited imports to a published list, then a dual-use list banning items judged usable for military purposes, and has restricted exports, construction materials, fuel and the movement of patients, students and workers. At sea, Israel has enforced a naval blockade and a fishing limit that has varied between three and fifteen nautical miles. Egypt's Rafah regime has alternated between near-closure and partial opening, with a crossing for people rather than cargo. The population inside the regime is about 2.2 million people on a strip roughly 41 kilometres long.
The 2010 flotilla and its legal record
The blockade's sharpest documented test came in May 2010, when Israeli commandos raided a flotilla attempting to break the naval closure and ten activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were killed. The 2011 UN report on the incident, the Palmer report, judged the naval blockade itself lawful under international law while condemning the force used aboard the vessel, a split conclusion each side has cited since. After the raid Israel eased the import regime from a list of permitted goods to a list of prohibited ones, a documented change that widened what could enter without ending the closure.
How the two sides argue it
Israel's case, stated in government and court documents, is that the restrictions are lawful security measures against an armed organisation that has fired rockets at Israeli cities, and that a maritime blockade of a hostile entity is recognised in international law. The documented opposing case, made by the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations bodies and human rights organisations, is that restricting the civilian population's movement and supplies constitutes collective punishment prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
How the regime changed over the years
The restrictions were never static. Israel moved from a permitted-goods list to a prohibited-goods list after the 2010 flotilla, allowed exports intermittently, opened and closed worker permits in rounds tied to security assessments, and adjusted the fishing limit up and down sometimes within weeks. Egypt's Rafah regime swung between a near-permanent closure and months of partial opening, and after 2013 the Egyptian side also destroyed the smuggling tunnels that had supplied the strip under the closure. The documented record is therefore not one blockade but a series of regimes under one name.
What the documented effects were
Before October 2023, United Nations documentation described a Gaza economy shaped by the restrictions: unemployment around half the labour force, most households dependent on aid to some degree, electricity limited to part of each day, and water mostly undrinkable by infrastructure assessment. The 2023 war overwhelmed that baseline entirely: the documented damage to housing, health and water systems, the displacement of most of the population and the collapse of the crossing regime into negotiated pauses make the pre-war figures a historical baseline rather than a description of the present. As of September 2026, the crossings and the fishing limit operate under wartime and post-ceasefire arrangements that remain in flux.
Where the blockade sits in the wider record
The restrictions are the sharpest case of the conflict's central documented pattern: a security measure on one side, a collective harm on the other, and a legal literature that recognises both descriptions. For the sequence that produced the closure, see Key Dates of the Conflict. For the framework the blockade arguments run inside, see the two-state history and the context section.