Gaza Day in Iran Date in the current year: January 19, 2024

The Gaza Strip, often referred to as simply Gaza, is a Palestinian enclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea with an area of 365 sq km. Alongside the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, it is part of the de jure sovereign State of Palestine.

Between 1923 and 1948, Gaza was part of Mandatory Palestine, a geopolitical entity in the historical region of Palestine established under the terms of a League of Nations mandate and administered by the United Kingdom. In 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab states. Gaza was supposed to become part of the Arab state.

However, Arab states and Palestinian Arabs were against the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine. Following the proclamation of Israeli independence on May 14, 1948, military forces of the neighboring Arab states invaded Israel, sparking the 1948 Arab—Israeli War, commonly referred to as the War of Independence in Israel.

During the war, Gaza was occupied by Egypt, and the present boundary between the Gaza Strip and Israel was set. The Gaza strip remained under Egyptian control until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by the Israel Defense Forces. Israel didn’t formally annex Gaza but began to establish Jewish settlements there.

In subsequent years, several uprisings against the Israeli occupation broke out in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, for example, the First Intifada, which resulted in the establishment of the Palestine Authority, and the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which led to Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

In 2006, the fundamentalist organization Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election and became the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip. Shortly after the election, the Gaza—Israeli conflict began. In two and a half years, it escalated into the Gaza War, known as Operation Cast Lead in Israel or the Gaza Massacre in the Muslim world.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a wave of air strikes on December 27, 2008 and began a ground invasion on January 2, 2009. On January 11, the IDF began to proceed into the Gaza city. On January 17, Israel declared unilateral ceasefire that came into force the following day.

The day after the ceasefire, the Islamic Consultative Assembly (the parliament of Iran) declared January 19 as Gaza Day. This commemorative date was established to emphasize the courage and resilience of Muslims, as well as to express the solidarity of the Iranian people with the Palestinians.

In addition to Gaza Day, Iran and some other Muslim states observe Quds Day on the last Friday of Ramadan. Both observances focus on expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposing Zionism and the existence of Israel.