The back-story of Gaza, from the 1940s to the 2010s, told through the personal experiences of a wide variety of ordinary people – a teacher, a smuggler, a bird-watcher, musicians, doctors and others. Tim Whewell finds out how the tiny territory was created, how it first filled with refugees, how people lived, worked and died, how they survived invasions, wars and blockade, how hopes for peace rose and fell – under the rule of Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas. How did refugees arrive in Gaza in 1948? Why is the Strip so important to Palestinian identity – and the wider Palestinian-Israeli conflict? How did living conditions gradually improve? How did the 1967 Six Day War change people’s lives? Why did the two intifadas of 1987 and 2000 break out? When were the best times for Gazans in recent history? What changed for them after Hamas took control in 2007? Tim asks these and many other questions in this journey through the recent history of a sliver of land that has often dominated world news.

This post was originally published on The Documentary Podcast.