An open-air prison?

- Gaza City, 2018 - Wikipedia

If we're going to have any seriousness in this discussion, there has to be some recognition that activists said pre-war Gaza was "an open air prison" and now cast it as an idyll that was inexplicably destroyed after 7 October, where nobody seems to remember what happened. https://t.co/Bf7N7FdJQZ

— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) December 27, 2025

Before the Oct 7 war, I didn't know really anything about Gaza. My impression was that it was a relatively small squalid area comprised of flimsy tents ... you know, a "fefugee camp".

I didn't realize that Gaza had a border with Egypt, as well as with Israel, and that people could leave through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, though that was sometimes difficult or expensive.

I didn't realize either that the Gaza Strip had farms, sea-side resorts, universities, hospitals, large high-rise buildings in a number of cities, and some luxury residential areas like this one built by Qatar ... Qatari housing project in Gaza concludes first stage

Here are some photos of Gaza before the war, from Wikipedia ...

- a Gza amusement park

- a Gaza seaport

- the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital

- Nehru Library and Cultural Center at Gaza's Al-Azhar University - Wikipedia

- and Gaza City again, 2013 - Wikipedia

Yes, the Gaza Strip is mostly rubble now. But it wasn't an open-air prison before the war. And if Hamas had not started the war with atrocities and hostage-taking, if Hamas had not built a massive tunnel system under homes, hospitals, mosques, and schools, and booby-trapped almost every building, Gaza would not be rubble now.