Filmed during the first four months of 2001, a period that covers the election of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and extends to the first major armed incursion into "Area A" by the Israeli military, Gaza Strip is a striking piece of personal reportage made by a young American during his first trip to the Middle East. Longley’s aim was to make a documentary about Palestinians from inside the Gaza Strip, in reaction to what he perceived as a lack of good media coverage of that area. The resulting work emerges as a potent record of the humanity of a people under siege: children dodging machine-gun fire on their way home from school, rock-throwing demonstrations, patients suffering in the hospitals from a gas attack, women in tents whose houses have been bulldozed, attacks and counterattacks, and many funerals.