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A Historian in Gaza
‘The Gaza I knew, and whose length and breadth I’ve travelled, has ceased to exist.’
Jean-Pierre Filiu, acclaimed historian of Gaza, is intimately familiar with the land’s people and places; he speaks the local dialect. But nothing prepared him for what he encountered there in December 2024. This is his unforgettable, unbearably intimate account of one month in a place shattered by Israel’s all-out war.
When the historian returned to Gaza, he arrived under circumstances unimaginably different from his many past visits since 1980: only a limited number of convoys were allowed into the Strip, and he was one of the few humanitarians able to enter, this time by night. He remained inside for 33 days, and emerged determined to bear witness to the devastation—to the Gazans fighting simply to live, every single day.
Filiu’s haunting portrait of a land betrayed is a grim work of war reportage, documented with the acuity of a historian; and a lyrical narrative of human suffering, and human dignity.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, acclaimed historian of Gaza, is intimately familiar with the land’s people and places; he speaks the local dialect. But nothing prepared him for what he encountered there in December 2024. This is his unforgettable, unbearably intimate account of one month in a place shattered by Israel’s all-out war.
When the historian returned to Gaza, he arrived under circumstances unimaginably different from his many past visits since 1980: only a limited number of convoys were allowed into the Strip, and he was one of the few humanitarians able to enter, this time by night. He remained inside for 33 days, and emerged determined to bear witness to the devastation—to the Gazans fighting simply to live, every single day.
Filiu’s haunting portrait of a land betrayed is a grim work of war reportage, documented with the acuity of a historian; and a lyrical narrative of human suffering, and human dignity.
182 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 20, 2025
About the author
Jean-Pierre Filiu
45 books44 followersJean-Pierre Filiu (1961) is a French professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs, an Orientalist and an Arabist.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 30, 2026
Unfortunately, nothing in this book read as new information and didn't even really read as though it was coming from a historians perspective, it all felt like things you could learn from a very easy google search.
Review of advance copy
This book may be short but it is an essential read for those who want to try to understand what people like you and me go through when trapped in a war zone. Jean-Pierre Filiu is a French professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs and he spent a month in Gaza with Médecins Sans Frontières. Nothing prepared him for what he observed and he admits himself that he was protected from the worst - he always had access to clean water, food and a warm place to sleep. Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre Filiu attempts to portray an accurate, balanced account of what he did witness. Filiu is not naïve and refuses to take sides. For example, he condemns ‘Israel’s endless war against Gaza, rather than Hamas’ while recognising that Hamas’s frustration at not being able to fight the “Zionist enemy” was vented by ‘military aggression on their own people’. In reality, most of those living in Gaza just want to get on with their lives but are enduring the ‘nightmare within a nightmare of Islamist domination under Israeli occupation’. Unless you have experienced something similar, it’s impossible to fully understand what innocent Gazans have suffered and continue to live through but this book allows readers to gain at least some insight.
December 28, 2025
I found the book underwhelming, because it was merely a general overview of the Gaza situation which I felt I could have researched through Wikipedia.
It is titled ‘a historian in Gaza’, yet the author, who is the historian in question, provides minuscule anecdotes about his time in Gaza, shielding the reader from a deeper understanding of what life was like, at least from his perspective.
I felt as if this should have been a been a blog post, not a book.
It is titled ‘a historian in Gaza’, yet the author, who is the historian in question, provides minuscule anecdotes about his time in Gaza, shielding the reader from a deeper understanding of what life was like, at least from his perspective.
I felt as if this should have been a been a blog post, not a book.
January 7, 2026
Quite interesting and very brief
April 8, 2026
This book can be read in one or two sittings. I will post my review here once it is published at Responsible Statecraft.
Here it is:
As the war in Iran absorbs the world’s attention, with its images of dead school girls and flattened buildings, it may be easy to overlook Gaza. It has been a full five months since a ceasefire went into effect. It did not stop the bloodshed and intense suffering: Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians since October, and the enclave remains in dire need of food and medicine. Yet Gaza has disappeared from America’s front pages as the Trump administration’s Board of Peace, mostly bereft of Palestinian leadership, attempts to steer a peace plan to its second phase.
Moving on implies that one was once preoccupied with something. It is true that people all over the world intently watched Israel’s war of annihilation unfold on their smartphone screens. They were appalled by the indiscriminate violence that killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Campuses erupted in protest.
Their governments, however, had abandoned Gaza long before. As Israeli bombs and missiles killed and maimed Palestinians and leveled hospitals and refugee camps, Washington kept the weapons flowing to Tel Aviv while providing an Israeli veto at the U.N. Security Council. European and Arab governments protested, some more vehemently than others, but lacked either the will or the influence to stop what a growing consensus of historians, jurists, human rights groups, and international legal bodies considered genocide.
In “A Historian in Gaza,” eminent historian Jean-Pierre Filiu shows us the consequences of this international indifference, drawing on his monthlong visit to the shattered strip in early 2025. “Gazans know the world has abandoned them,” Filiu writes. “At first they believed that images of the slaughter would so horrify the international public that they would demand action to end it. The realization that this was not going to happen compounded the wounds of the injured with its own pain.”
The rest:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/the...
Here it is:
As the war in Iran absorbs the world’s attention, with its images of dead school girls and flattened buildings, it may be easy to overlook Gaza. It has been a full five months since a ceasefire went into effect. It did not stop the bloodshed and intense suffering: Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians since October, and the enclave remains in dire need of food and medicine. Yet Gaza has disappeared from America’s front pages as the Trump administration’s Board of Peace, mostly bereft of Palestinian leadership, attempts to steer a peace plan to its second phase.
Moving on implies that one was once preoccupied with something. It is true that people all over the world intently watched Israel’s war of annihilation unfold on their smartphone screens. They were appalled by the indiscriminate violence that killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Campuses erupted in protest.
Their governments, however, had abandoned Gaza long before. As Israeli bombs and missiles killed and maimed Palestinians and leveled hospitals and refugee camps, Washington kept the weapons flowing to Tel Aviv while providing an Israeli veto at the U.N. Security Council. European and Arab governments protested, some more vehemently than others, but lacked either the will or the influence to stop what a growing consensus of historians, jurists, human rights groups, and international legal bodies considered genocide.
In “A Historian in Gaza,” eminent historian Jean-Pierre Filiu shows us the consequences of this international indifference, drawing on his monthlong visit to the shattered strip in early 2025. “Gazans know the world has abandoned them,” Filiu writes. “At first they believed that images of the slaughter would so horrify the international public that they would demand action to end it. The realization that this was not going to happen compounded the wounds of the injured with its own pain.”
The rest:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/the...
May 21, 2026
That's the flag of Sudan on the cover, not Palestine. All other versions appear to be correct, just not this one.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews