Ancient Gaza stood on the coastal road between Egypt and the Levant. Merchants and armies passed through the area. So did officials from the empires that ruled it. This traffic made the city valuable for trade and war. Britannica’s history of Palestine places the southern coast within this wider system. The modern political meanings of Palestine, Israel, and Gaza did not yet exist.
The earliest record contains several cultures and governments. It is not one unbroken national history. Gaza first appears within Canaanite city life. Egypt later gained great influence there. Gaza then became one of the five main Philistine cities on the southern coast. Britannica’s entry on the Philistines explains what followed. The Philistine cities were absorbed by larger empires.
The Hebrew Bible and later histories place Gaza near the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms. Gaza appears as rival land, a border area, or an important city. These sources do not make Gaza a modern Jewish national territory. They do show that Jewish history in the wider land began many centuries before modern Zionism.
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires each ruled Gaza during the first millennium BCE. The record shows an important city governed from outside. It also places Canaanite, Egyptian, Philistine, Jewish, and imperial histories in the same region. That record is too mixed to support a modern state story projected back into ancient times.