Who controlled Gaza before 1967 — and what happened to its people?¶

Short answer: for the nineteen years between the 1948 and 1967 wars, Gaza was ruled by Egypt — under a military government that never annexed it and deliberately left its people stateless. But who is responsible for what Gaza became has more than one answer. The disaster that filled it and the stalemate that trapped it had many authors: the Palestinian leadership that rejected the 1947 partition and chose war; the Arab states that launched that war and lost it; the Arab League, which made statelessness a regional policy; the pan-Arab movement, which kept the refugees as a live claim instead of resettling them; the UN relief system, which deepened their dependence; Egypt, the ruling power for those nineteen years; and Israel, whose actions in 1948, in the 1956 occupation, and from 1967 are part of the record too. Blaming it all on "Israel" (the modern reflex) or all on "the Arabs" (its mirror) erases most of the cast. Here is the fuller map.

The ruler for nineteen years: Egypt¶

Administration, not annexation. Egypt held Gaza under military administration from 1948 to 1967. Unlike Jordan, which annexed the West Bank and gave its residents citizenship, Egypt never claimed sovereignty [VERIFIED via Britannica, the Institute for Palestine Studies].
Statelessness by design. Egypt did not grant Gazans citizenship. They were left stateless, holding Egyptian travel documents rather than passports. They needed permits even to enter Egypt proper [VERIFIED].
A hollow self-rule. The All-Palestine Government (Gaza, September 1948, under Hajj Amin al-Husseini) was dependent on Egypt from the start. It moved to Cairo within months and was dissolved by 1959. Most historians read it as a symbolic body, an Egyptian/Arab-League instrument [DOCUMENTED].
Repressive and neglected. Britannica sums up the two decades this way. Gaza "remained little more than a reservation," under "generally repressive" rule, with no significant development program and an economy left dependent on UN relief [VERIFIED/DOCUMENTED].

What filled Gaza: the 1948 catastrophe, and who set it in motion¶

Gaza's defining fact is that it became a refugee territory almost overnight. That had several authors:

The 1947 partition offered an Arab state. The Arab Higher Committee (Husseini) and the Arab League rejected it and chose war rather than a two-state division [VERIFIED].
Five Arab armies invaded in May 1948. The war they launched and lost produced the mass displacement [VERIFIED].
The result inside Gaza: a pre-war population of ~80,000 received 200,000+ refugees, which roughly tripled the Strip [DOCUMENTED/ESTIMATED — 200,000 is a well-supported floor]. The displacement itself was a documented mix of expulsion by Israeli forces (including the destruction of dozens of villages in the wider Gaza district) and flight from the fighting. The relative weight of each is genuinely contested [PARTIALLY DISPUTED — stated as such].

Three authors made Gaza a refugee strip: the leadership that refused the partition, the states that launched the war, and the displacement in which Israeli forces played a documented part. Each is real. None is the whole story.

Why they stayed refugees: a bloc choice, not an accident¶

Displacement happens in many conflicts. But permanent, hereditary refugee status for two decades was a policy:

A regional non-naturalization policy. Arab League members were urged not to naturalize Palestinian refugees, to preserve their Palestinian nationality and the right of return. The best-documented instrument is the Casablanca Protocol (11 September 1965), which directed host states to grant residency, work, and travel documents while withholding citizenship [DOCUMENTED via the Protocol text; the often-cited "Arab League Resolution 1547 of 1959" appears mainly in secondary/advocacy sources and is flagged here, not stated as primary fact]. The contrast proves it was a choice. Jordan did the opposite and naturalized most West Bank Palestinians.
Pan-Arabism kept the refugees as a standing claim against Israel's legitimacy rather than a population to be resettled.
The UN relief model (UNRWA, from 1950; ~48,000 shelters across eight camps) delivered rations and schooling but not resettlement, which entrenched dependency. Every resettlement plan collapsed (the 1951 Blandford Plan, the US/UNRWA Sinai scheme). The 1955 Gaza uprising killed the Sinai plan [DOCUMENTED].

The one time Israel ruled Gaza before 1967: the 1956 occupation¶

During the 1956 Suez war Israel occupied Gaza (November 1956 – March 1957). This was the only pre-1967 period when Israel, not Egypt, held the Strip. Israel declared the population collectively responsible for attacks on its soldiers [VERIFIED]. Two episodes are on the record. Each has both accounts and attributed, contested figures:

Khan Yunis (3 November 1956): the UNRWA Director's contemporaneous UN report named 275 dead (140 refugees, 135 local residents). Benny Morris puts the whole-occupation toll near 500. Israel cited armed resistance and weapons searches. Refugees said unarmed men were shot after resistance ceased, and Morris leans to the latter [DOCUMENTED via UNRWA report A/3212/Add.1 and Morris; count and cause PARTIALLY DISPUTED].
Rafah (12 November 1956): during a screening operation, UNRWA counted 111 killed. Ben-Gurion told the Knesset 48 (quelling a riot). A Palestinian figure is 197 (plus 23 missing) [DOCUMENTED; PARTIALLY DISPUTED — 48/111/197].

The occupation ended under US pressure (Eisenhower's sanctions threat). Israel withdrew in March 1957, and the first-ever UN peacekeeping force (UNEF) deployed [VERIFIED].

The violence ran both ways: fedayeen and reprisals¶

Cross-border fedayeen raids from Gaza killed Israeli soldiers and civilians. Egypt's posture changed over time. Before 1955 it largely tried to curb infiltration. After Israel's February 1955 Gaza raid, Nasser began organizing and sponsoring fedayeen units and publicly embraced them that year [DOCUMENTED via Morris — "continuous Egyptian sponsorship from 1949" would be inaccurate].
The tolls ran both directions. Roughly 200 Israelis killed by cross-border attacks 1949–56 (all fronts, not Gaza alone), against ~2,700–5,000 Arabs killed in the same years. Many of the Arab dead were unarmed border-crossers killed in Israeli reprisal raids [DOCUMENTED/ESTIMATED — attributed ranges].

The 1967 hinge: Israel becomes the ruler — and the Arab states choose the "three noes"¶

In the June 1967 Six-Day War Israel captured Gaza. This, not 1948, is when the Israeli occupation actually began — the one the modern reflex projects backward. Two post-war facts belong to the hinge, one on each side:

The Naksa displacement. The Gaza-specific figures come from the scholar Sara Roy: roughly 75,000 residents evicted in 1967–68 and at least 25,000 barred from return (Roy calls ~25% of the prewar population "a conservative estimate") [DOCUMENTED — Roy, The Gaza Strip, 2016; these are gross evictions, not net decline — Gaza's overall population stayed roughly flat as high birth rates offset out-migration (MERIP)]. Benny Morris records that "dozens" of suspected fighters "appear to have been summarily executed, without trial" under Southern Command [DOCUMENTED — Morris, Righteous Victims, his own hedge; distinct from the 1956 killings above].
The Khartoum "three noes." Less than three months after the war, the Arab states met at the Khartoum Arab League summit (resolution issued 1 September 1967). They declared "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people" [VERIFIED — Khartoum Resolution, para. 3; the familiar three-line slogan is the popular distillation]. The plain text and its contemporaneous reception read as a hardline foreclosure of a negotiated settlement (the mainstream reading — Morris, Quandt). A minority scholarly reading, argued by Avi Shlaim (The Iron Wall, 2001, pp. 258–59), takes the "noes" more narrowly: no formal treaty, no direct talks, and no de jure recognition, but acceptance of Israel's existence and a turn toward recovering the 1967 territories by political means [PARTIALLY DISPUTED — recorded as the minority interpretation]. Either way, it is documented Arab-state agency sustaining the conflict past 1967, the diplomatic counterpart to the earlier choice to keep the refugees stateless.

Egypt's nineteen years ended. Israel's rule began. And the Arab states' collective posture hardened into the "three noes."

The accountability map¶

Each actor has its own share, stated once. None is the sole author:

The 1947–48 Palestinian leadership (Husseini / the AHC): rejected the partition that offered a state and chose the war that produced the refugees.
The invading Arab states (1948) and the Arab League: launched and lost the 1948 war whose displacement filled Gaza; made non-naturalization a regional policy; and, at Khartoum in 1967, chose the "three noes" over a negotiated peace.
Egypt (1948–67): ruled Gaza as a stateless, neglected holding-territory and sponsored the fedayeen.
The pan-Arab movement: kept the refugees as a standing claim rather than resettling them.
The UN / international relief system: built a relief-not-resettlement model that entrenched dependency, and could not carry the resettlement plans through.
Israel: a documented role in the 1948 displacement; the 1956 occupation and its killings; and, from 1967, the occupier of Gaza.

Bottom line: before 1967, Gaza was Egypt's to govern, and Egypt governed it as a stateless holding-pen. Its people were the refugees of a war their own leadership and the Arab states chose in 1948. A regional policy kept them refugees, preferring the claim to the resettlement. Israel ruled Gaza only in one four-month occupation, whose killings are on the record, and became its ruler in 1967, not 1948. "How we got here" has many authors. It neither reverts to Israel alone nor absolves anyone else.

Go deeper: Why was there no push for a Palestinian state 1948–1967? · Refugees — Status & the Absorption Ledger · The Right of Return · Key Actor: Egypt · Israeli State Establishment & 1948