Gaza

30 October 2025

Gaza is the name of a city on the Mediterranean coast in Palestine, bordering Egypt and Israel. The name, in the form Gaza Strip, is also applied to the surrounding territory, which along with the West Bank constitute the current Palestinian territory. The city is often called Gaza City to differentiate it from the surrounding territory.

Gaza has been a place of human habitation for some 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world.

Gaza is a transliteration of the Arabic name غَزَّة. In Hebrew it is rendered עַזָּה (‘Azza). The name dates to at least the mid fourteenth-century BCE when it appears, in Akkadian as Ha-za-ti, in the El Amarna tablet EA 289:

Now as for the city of Jerusalem, if this land belongs to the king, why, as the city of Ha-za-ti belongs to the king, is it just sitting (isolated)?

Gaza has been occupied and ruled by a variety of states and empires over the millennia, including the Philistines, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Ottomans, the British, and the Israelis. In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority which was granted governing authority over the Gaza Strip. But in 2006, Hamas won elections in Gaza and took control of the territory. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority still claims authority over the region, but Hamas exercised de facto control until the Israeli invasion and occupation in response to the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023. As of this writing, governing authority over the territory is in flux.

There are a number of (probably) false etymologies associated with the name. One, based on the Hebrew name, is that it comes from the Semitic root ע-ז-ז‎ (ʻayin-zayin-zayin) meaning strength or fierceness. Another is that the English word gauze comes from the name of the city.

Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Gaza.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1898, s.v. gauze, n.

Rainey, Anson F., William M. Schniedewind, and Zipora Cochavi-Rainey. “EA 289.” The El-Amarna Correspondence, vol. 1 of 2. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 1120–21. ProQuest Ebook Central.