Khan Yunis

Khan Yunis (خان يونس), also spelled Khan Younis or Khan Yunus, is a largely destroyed city in the southern Gaza Strip; it is the capital of the Khan Yunis Governorate in the Gaza Strip.

Before the 14th century, Khan Yunis was a village known as "Salqah". To protect caravans, pilgrims and travellers a vast caravan serai was constructed there by the emir Yūnus an-Nūrūzī in 1387–88, an official of the Mamluk Empire.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Khan Yunis had a population of 205,125 in 2017. Khan Yunis, which lies only 4 km east of the Mediterranean Sea, has a semi-arid climate with temperature of 30 °C maximum in summer and 10 °C minimum in winter, with an annual rainfall of approximately 260 mm.

Ancient period
Herodotus describes a city named Ienysos (Ιηνυσος) located between Lake Serbonis and Kadytis (modern Gaza city). He talks about how the Persian military marched through the location on its way to Egypt. He also describes how the coastal area between Kadytis and Ienysos was inhabited by local Arab tribes. Some sources, due to phonological resemblance of the names and due to the general matching of the geographic locations, associate this site with modern Khan Yunis.

Other sources have suggested a further inland location of "Khirbet Ma'in Abu Sitta" (Palestinian village depopulated in 1949, near modern kibbutz of Nir Oz) or the Egyptian town of Arish as possible locations of Ienysos, but there is no clear evidence to support this identification.

Ancient discoveries in Khan Yunis feature a lintel with a Greek inscription, discovered repurposed in the tomb of Sheikh Hamada. The inscription translates to: 'Hilarion - giving thanks to St. Georgius.' Originally housed in the Musée de Notre Dame de France in Jerusalem, the lintel is currently lost.

Establishment by Mamluks
Before the 14th century, Khan Yunis was a village known as "Salqah". To protect caravans, pilgrims and travellers a vast caravan serai was constructed there by emir Yūnus an-Nūrūzī in 1387–88, an official of the Mamluk Empire. The growing town surrounding it was named "Khan Yunis" after him. In 1389 Yunus was killed in battle. Yunus ibn Abdallah an-Nuruzi ad-Dawadar was the executive secretary (dawadar), one of the high-ranking officials of the Mamluk sultan Barquq. The town became an important center for trade and its weekly Thursday market drew traders from neighboring regions. ''

The khan served as resting stop for couriers of the barid, the Mamluk postal network in Palestine and Syria.

Ottoman period
In late 1516 Khan Yunis was the site of a minor battle in which the Egypt-based Mamluks were defeated by Ottoman forces under the leadership of Sinan Pasha. The Ottoman sultan Selim I then arrived in the area where he led the Ottoman army across the Sinai Peninsula to conquer Egypt. During the 17th and 18th centuries the Ottomans assigned an Asappes garrison associated with the Cairo Citadel to guard the fortress at Khan Yunis.

Pierre Jacotin named the village Kan Jounes on his map from 1799, while in 1838, Robinson noted Khan Yunas as a Muslim village located in the Gaza district. In 1863 French explorer Victor Guérin visited Khan Yunis. He found it had about a thousand inhabitants, and that many fruit trees, especially apricots were planted in the vicinity.

At the end of the 19th-century the Ottomans established a municipal council to administer the affairs of Khan Yunis, which had become the second largest town in the Gaza District after Gaza itself.

British Mandate
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Khan Yunis had a population of 3890 inhabitants (3866 Muslims, 23 Christians, and one Jew), decreasing in the 1931 census to 3811 (3767 Muslims, 41 Christians, and three Jews), in 717 houses in the urban area and 3440 (3434 Muslims and 6 Christians) in 566 houses in the suburbs.



In the 1938 village statistics, the population is listed as 4,379 (including three Jews) with 3,953 in nearby suburbs. In the 1945 statistics, Khan Yunis had a population of 11,220 (11,180 Muslims and 40 Christians), with 2,302 (urban) and 53,820 (rural) dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 4,172 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 23,656 used for cereals, while 1,847 dunams were built-up land.



During the Nazi occupation of the Dodecanese, many Greeks from Dodecanese islands such as Kastelorizo sought refuge in the nearby Nuseirat Camp.

1948–1967
During the night of 31 August 1955, three Israeli paratroop companies attacked the British-built Tegart fort in Khan Yunis from where attacks had been carried out against Israelis. The police station, a petrol station and several buildings in the village of Abasan were destroyed, as well as railway tracks and telegraph poles. In heavy fighting, 72 Egyptian soldiers were killed. One Israeli soldier was killed and 17 were wounded. The operation led to a ceasefire on September 4, forcing President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Egyptian government to halt Palestinian fedayeen operations against Israel. One of the mechanized companies was commanded by Rafael Eitan.

Before the Suez War, Khan Yunis was officially administered by the All-Palestine Government, seated in Gaza and later in Cairo. After a fierce firefight, the Sherman tanks of the IDF 37th Armored Brigade broke through the heavily fortified lines outside of Khan Yunis held by the 86th Palestinian Brigade. It was the only site in the Gaza strip where the Egyptian army put up any resistance to the Israeli invasion of Gaza, but it surrendered on 3 November 1956.

There are conflicting reports of what happened. Israel said that Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces were still facing armed resistance, while the Palestinians said all resistance had ceased by then, and that many unarmed civilians were killed as the Israel troops went through the town and camp, seeking men in possession of arms.

The killings, dubbed the Khan Yunis massacre, were reported to the UN General Assembly on 15 December 1956 by the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Henry Labouisse. According to the report, the exact number of dead and wounded is not known, but the director received lists of names of persons allegedly killed from a trustworthy source, including 275 people, of which 140 were refugees and 135 local residents.

After 1959, the All-Palestine Government of Gaza Strip was abolished and the city was included in the United Arab Republic, which was shortly disestablished and the Gaza Strip came under the direct Egyptian military occupation rule.

1967 and aftermath


In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel occupied Khan Yunis again.

Khan Yunis was the site of Israeli helicopter attacks in August 2001 and October 2002 that left several civilians killed, hundreds wounded and civilian buildings within the vicinity destroyed. It is known as a stronghold of the Palestinian Hamas.

It is currently an Area A territory in the state of Palestine.

Israel–Hamas war
During the ongoing Israel–Hamas war, Israel has bombed Khan Yunis along with other cities in the Gaza Strip as part of an offensive against Hamas. The Israeli Air Force extensively bombed much of the city, including the Hamad City apartment complex. Local sources have reported numerous civilian casualties in Khan Yunis as a result of Israeli bombings, which Palestinian news agency Wafa put at "at least 70" as of December 3. The Al Qarara Cultural Museum was destroyed in an explosion as a result of an Israeli attack in October 2023, part of an offensive that reportedly targeted civilian homes and mosques in the vicinity. Israeli armored units began entering the outskirts of the city in December 2023. After several months of fighting, Israeli forces ended up withdrawing from Khan Yunis and most of the southern Gaza Strip.

Economy
Khan Yunis is the second largest urban area in the Gaza Strip after Gaza City. It serves as the principal market center of the territory's southern half and hosts a weekly Bedouin souk ("open-air market") mostly involving local commodities. Khan Yunis had the highest unemployment rate in the Palestinian territories.

Education

 * University College of Science and Technology
 * Al Quds Open University

Notable people

 * Mohammed Shabir (1946 – 2023), former president of The Islamic University in Gaza
 * Yahya Sinwar (born 1962), a Palestinian politician who has been leader of Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political and military organization that rules the Gaza Strip, since 2017.

Twin towns – sister cities
Khan Yunis is twinned with the following cities:
 * 🇳🇴 Hamar, Norway
 * 🇪🇸 Almuñécar, Spain
 * 🇫🇷 Évry, France
 * 🇮🇹 Bisceglie, Italy
 * 🇮🇹 Alcamo, Italy