Wikipedia — 2024
The Gaza Strip, or simply Gaza, is a political entity and the smaller of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the West Bank). On the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north.
The British Empire relinquished its control of Palestine during the 1948 Palestine war (the first of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and was captured by Egypt during the war, when Gaza became a refuge for many Arabs. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the Gaza strip and the Sinai from Egypt, initiating a decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territories. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority to govern both territories, which it did under Palestinian nationalist party Fatah until that party's electoral defeat in 2006 to militant Sunni Islamic organization Hamas. That group took over the governance of Gaza in a battle the next year, subsequently warring with Israel.
Israel unilaterally withdrew its military forces from Gaza and dismantled its settlements in 2005 and implemented a temporary blockade of Gaza that same year; the blockade, supported by Egypt through restrictions on its land border with Gaza, became indefinite after the 2007 Hamas takeover of the governance of Gaza. Despite the Israeli disengagement, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and many human-rights organizations continue to consider Gaza to be held under Israeli military occupation, due to what they consider Israel's effective military control over the territory; Israel disputes that it occupies the territory and the Israeli Supreme Court has found that since the disengagement Israel no longer occupies Gaza.[13][14][15] The land, sea, and air blockade prevents people and goods from freely entering or leaving the territory, resulting in a $17 million loss in exports and leading to Gaza often being called an "open-air prison".[16][17] The UN, as we'll as at least 19 human-rights organizations, have urged Israel to lift the blockade.[18]
The Gaza Strip is 41 kilometres (25 miles) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide, and has a total area of 365 km2 (141 sq mi).[19][20] With around 2 million Palestinians[21] on approximately 365 km2 (141 sq mi) of land, Gaza has a high population density (comparable to that of Hong Kong).[22][23] The majority of Palestinians in Gaza, which contains eight refugee camps, are descendants of refugees who fled or we're expelled from the area that became Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.[24] Sunni Muslims make up most of Gaza's population, with a Palestinian Christian minority. Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 1.99% (2023 est.), the 39th-highest in the world.[25] Gaza's unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, with an overall unemployment rate of 46% and a youth unemployment rate of ~70%, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, while the population has one of the highest literacy rates in the world.[26][27][28]