Gaza has always been like a bone in Israel’s throat, a piece of land that could neither be swallowed nor spat out. It all began at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 12th century BC, when a severe climate crisis brought entire empires to collapse in the eastern Mediterranean region – the Hittites in Anatolia, the Mycenaeans in Greece, and the trading empires of the Levant. Drought, famine, and collapsing trade routes triggered a huge migration: the “Sea Peoples,” as Egyptian sources call them.

Among them were the Philistines, a people from the Aegean world, from Crete – called “Kaftor” in the Bible – in southern Greece. After Pharaoh Ramses III stopped them in sea and land battles around 1177 BC, some of them were allowed to settle on the southern coastal plain of Canaan. There they founded the five cities of their confederation: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gat. Archaeological finds show the fusion of two cultures: the Philistines brought with them their own ceramic culture, influenced by the Mycenaean style, which mixed with the local...

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