Khan Yunis

Overview

Khan Yunis is a major city in southern Gaza Strip, southwest of Gaza City and north of Rafah. Its position on the route between Gaza and Egypt shaped its development as a trading center. In modern times, the city and its surrounding district have been central to Gaza’s political history, Israeli–Arab security arrangements, and successive wars involving Israel. The city also includes a refugee camp in which several senior figures of the terrorist organization Hamas grew up.^[1]

Khan Yunis became a major battleground in the Gaza war (2023–present) after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel in 2023. Israeli forces entered the area in December 2023 and fought Hamas in dense neighborhoods and an extensive tunnel network until the withdrawal of the 98th Division in April 2024. Fighting, rocket launches, and Israeli operations continued afterward. The city’s wartime experience has included damage to civilian areas, displacement, contested accounts of specific strikes, and efforts to maintain drinking-water supplies.^[2][3][4]

Geography

Khan Yunis lies in the southern part of the narrow coastal Gaza Strip. Its district includes urban neighborhoods, agricultural land, the coastal al-Mawasi area, and approaches toward Rafah and the Egyptian border. The Khan Yunis fishing wharf and sections of the coast figured in the Gaza–Jericho security arrangements, while the Sufa crossing and Rafah terminal were linked to the district’s coordination office. The city’s built-up areas and nearby communities formed a connected theater of operations during the 2023–2024 fighting.^[1][5][6]

A desalination plant serving southern and central Gaza illustrates the area’s dependence on regional infrastructure. The UNICEF-managed facility was intended to supply drinking water to Khan Yunis, Deir el-Balah, and al-Mawasi. Israel approved and connected an electricity line to the plant during the war to increase production. The connection became operational in November 2024, after months in which electricity shortages had constrained water output.^[7][8]

Ancient and biblical history

The ancient history of the site is less firmly established than its medieval history. The Greek historian Herodotus named a Philistine town called Ienysos, which has been proposed as an identification for Khan Yunis. The city’s documented prominence, however, dates to the Mamluk period, when its location made it a market and stopping place for caravans traveling between Egypt and the Land of Israel. Sultan Barquq ordered the construction of a khan, or caravan inn, whose remains and inscriptions attest to that role. The inn gave the settlement its enduring name.^[1]

Jewish history

Khan Yunis had a small Jewish presence in the early twentieth century. The 1931 census recorded three Jews among the town’s 3,811 residents, alongside 40 Christians; another 3,440 people lived in its vicinity. Before 1948, Jewish institutions and private individuals sought to purchase land near Khan Yunis, including publicly held land known as jiftlik, but legal obstacles prevented completion of those transfers. These episodes belonged to the wider history of Jewish settlement and land acquisition in the region before the establishment of Israel.^[1]

The area’s later Jewish history was closely tied to nearby Gush Katif, a group of Israeli communities in southern Gaza. Under the Gaza–Jericho arrangements, Israel retained authority over Gush Katif while the local Arab administration could operate specified sections of al-Mawasi beach and the Khan Yunis and Rafah wharves. Israel removed the Jewish communities of Gush Katif and withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005. Those changes altered the security relationship between Khan Yunis, the coast, and Israeli communities beyond Gaza’s border.^[5]

Modern history

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Khan Yunis remained within the Gaza Strip, which came under Egyptian rule. Israel briefly held the city after the 1956 Sinai Campaign. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured Gaza, including Khan Yunis. The town had 52,997 inhabitants in 1967, nearly half of them living in refugee camps, reflecting the demographic transformation that followed the 1948 war. Agriculture, including citrus, dates, vegetables, and other crops, remained an important part of the local economy.^[1]

The 1994 Gaza–Jericho Agreement transferred local responsibilities in Khan Yunis under a framework that preserved specified Israeli security powers. It established a District Coordination Office for the Khan Yunis district at Nuriya Camp, with subordinate Joint Liaison Bureaus at the Sufa crossing and Rafah terminal. Two Israeli-led joint patrols were assigned to al-Mawasi, the Khan Yunis and Rafah fishing wharves, and the coast road. The agreement also specified beach sections that the local Arab administration could operate despite Israel’s retained authority over Gush Katif.^[5]

After Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas violently seized power there in 2007. Khan Yunis was an important center of the organization’s military structure. Yahya Sinwar, born in 1962 in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, grew up in the city and later became Hamas’s leader in Gaza. His killings of people suspected of collaborating with Israel earned him the nickname “Butcher of Khan Younis.” He formed a lasting friendship with Mohammed Deif, who became head of Hamas’s military wing. In 2005, Hamas publicly identified Sinwar as commander of its Khan Yunis Brigade, an unusual disclosure for an organization that generally concealed its commanders’ identities. Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed was also born in the refugee camp, in 1975.^[9][10]

Armed activity around Khan Yunis continued between major wars. Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades announced the death of Tariq Farid Abu Jizer during a policing mission in the city in August 2009 and the death of Anwar Faraj al-Ghalban while he worked on a tunnel east of the city in August 2015. In 2018, Fatah’s eastern Khan Yunis branch issued a death notice for Jihad Abu Jamous, an operative in its armed wing. These episodes show the presence of multiple armed organizations in the district, alongside Hamas’s dominant position after 2007.^[11]

Security

Khan Yunis was a site of fighting and civilian-harm reports during the 2014 Gaza War. Reports concerning an Israeli airstrike on the Kaware family’s residential building on July 8, 2014, were examined by Israel’s military fact-finding assessment mechanism. After reviewing its findings, the Military Advocate General closed the Kaware case without opening a criminal investigation or taking further action against the forces involved. Reports that a July 20 strike on the Abu-Jama family home killed 27 civilians were also referred for fact-finding assessment. A July 25 incident involving the reported death of an ambulance driver near Khan Yunis underwent military review. Separately, complaints of property looting in Khuza’a and Khan Yunis led the Military Advocate General to open four criminal investigations. Referral for assessment, closure of the Kaware case, and opening of the looting investigations were distinct procedural decisions.^[12][13]

Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks, the Israel Defense Forces moved from operations in northern Gaza into Khan Yunis in December. The city became a focus of fighting in early December because Hamas had organized defenses there and a substantial network beneath its neighborhoods. Eight Israeli brigades made slow progress in intensive above-ground and underground operations. The IDF’s 98th Division developed methods for simultaneous fighting on the surface and in tunnels, using infantry, commandos, armor, engineering forces, and air support. These operations pressed toward breaking Hamas’s organized defenses in the district.^[2][3][14]

By January 8, 2024, the IDF’s 7th Armored Brigade had expanded operations in southern Khan Yunis alongside commandos and paratroopers of the 98th Division. Its soldiers fought Hamas terrorists in close combat, with tank fire, and through coordinated air operations. Forces found weapons and terrorist infrastructure concealed in civilian residences. During one engagement, terrorists fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli troops; tank fire and airstrikes then killed the cell. In the tunnel system, Israeli forces found weapons, command facilities, and places used to hold hostages. One tunnel exposed in February extended more than a kilometer and contained a barred cell and other rooms used by Hamas.^[14][15][16]

The 98th Division withdrew from the Khan Yunis area in April 2024 after about four months of fighting. That withdrawal did not end attacks originating there. On July 1, terrorists fired approximately 20 rockets from Khan Yunis toward Israel. Israeli defenses intercepted several projectiles, others fell in southern Israel, and no injuries were reported. IDF artillery struck the sources of fire. On July 2, the IDF issued an Arabic-language notice asking civilians to leave areas of Khan Yunis. The barrage demonstrated that terrorist groups could return to areas Israeli forces had left, rebuild infrastructure, and again threaten Israeli communities. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups in Gaza retained rockets and mortars during this period.^[4][17]

Israeli fighter jets struck a compound near Khan Yunis on July 13, 2024, killing Rafa’a Salameh, commander of Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade, and Mohammed Deif, head of its military wing. Salameh had led the brigade since 2016 and had been responsible for projectile launches from the Khan Yunis area. The strike removed two senior figures connected to Hamas’s military command, although armed activity in and around the city continued.^[18][19]

Present day

Khan Yunis remained affected by combat after the main December 2023–April 2024 operation. On June 24, 2025, a Hamas terrorist placed an explosive in an open hatch of a Puma armored engineering vehicle during operations in Khan Yunis. The blast and resulting fire killed seven soldiers of the IDF’s 605th Combat Engineering Battalion, including Matan Shai Yashinovski and Ronen Shapiro. Their deaths illustrated the continuing danger from Hamas attacks in the city well after the 98th Division’s withdrawal.^[20]

The city’s recent history combines its longstanding role as southern Gaza’s urban and agricultural center with the consequences of repeated warfare. Damage to neighborhoods and infrastructure has affected civilian life, while the desalination plant’s electricity connection has supported drinking-water provision for Khan Yunis and nearby areas. The July 2024 rockets and June 2025 attack also showed that the end of one major ground operation did not mean the end of Hamas’s capacity to operate around Khan Yunis.^{[4][7][17][20]}