Introduction

For more than seven decades, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have lived under various and multi-layered forms of control. This control extended from the Ottoman era over the Levant region, including Palestine in the 1830s, followed by the British Mandate (1920–48) and Egyptian administration (1948–67). Shortly after the 1948 Nakbeh, and under the Egyptian administration and the newly formed UNRWA administration, the Palestinian population in Gaza was isolated from the rest of Palestine. However, the 1967 Israeli military occupation of the remainder of historical Palestine, particularly the Gaza Strip, has had the most significant effect by reshaping the socio-economic and political realities on the ground (up to the present day). Control over the territory has not only impacted every aspect of people's lives, but has systematically restricted their abilities and potential to progress, politically, economically and socially. The occupation's socio-economic warfare and control have applied Sara Roy's ‘de-development’ concept. Discussions in this book have therefore acknowledged that the Israeli occupation has been, and continues to be, the main factor of control over the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.

However, in this book we aimed to go beyond the Israeli occupation as the main instrument of control and de-development and to examine how foreign aid has facilitated the emergence of new forms of control over the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip in the period that followed the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. By the emergence of new forms of control, we explored the aspects of life that have been influenced by the working dynamics of foreign aid delivery and the work of aid agencies in Gaza, and to see the ways in which Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are controlled and have evolved since the Oslo Accords and continue to evolve in such a way that affects their daily lives.

This book has provided empirical evidence with some examples that support the analysis presented in this conclusion. In brief, the book has relied on the post-development theory as a framework that guided the analysis of the relationship between the ‘developed’ and the ‘underdeveloped’ worlds. The framework emphasised that the emergence of ‘underdeveloped’ people or nations was originally a social construct determined by the ‘developed’ on the basis of the latter's economic growth and modernisation.