Gaza Strip

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GAZA STRIP

Region bordering Israel and Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea.

The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are almost all Palestinians with a population estimated at 1,100,000 (2003). Some 65 percent of these are refugees, descendants of the 250,000 refugees who flooded into the territory in 1948 during the first Arab–Israel War. Few carry passports and everyone is stateless. Arabic is the primary language; Islam is the primary religion, but Christians are also in residence. Eight UN-sponsored Palestinian refugee camps are located in the Gaza Strip.

The boundaries of the Gaza Strip have not changed since 1948; with only one-fifteenth the
area of the West Bank, it has one of the highest population densities in the world. The Strip is almost rectangular, bordered by Israel on the north and east and by Egypt on the south. It has no capital, but its largest cities are Gaza City, Khan Yunis, and Rafah. It measures some 28 miles (45 km) by about 5 miles (8 km).

The northern third belongs to the red sands of the Philistian plain; the southern two-thirds (south of the main watercourse, the Wadi Gaza) belong to the more fertile sandy loess of the northern Negev Desert coast. It is hot and humid in the summer, cooler and humid in the winter, with limited rainfall.

Gaza's economy is small, underdeveloped, and weak, historically generating close to 50 percent of its national product from external sources. Under Israeli control, its economy became heavily dependent on wage labor in Israel, where over half of Gaza's labor force was traditionally employed. Israeli military law undermined local economic development, and the combined impact of the first (1987–1993) and second (2000–) Palestinian uprisings and the Israeli government's harsh response has seriously weakened the local economy. Natural resources, notably land and water, are very limited and diminishing, and no mineral resources exist. Agriculture historically played a large role in the local economy, with citrus the primary agricultural export. Industry is largely traditional and rudimentary. Small factories manufacture beverages, tobacco, textiles, clothing, wood products, and plastics.

In ancient times the area was inhabited by the Philistines. It is mentioned in the Bible as the place of Samson's death and as the burial place of one of the great-grandfathers of the Prophet Muhammad. The Gaza area was conquered by many peoples, including the Jews (Hebrews), Romans, and Arabs, before it became part of the Ottoman Empire. After World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was dismembered, the Gaza region became part of the British mandate over Palestine. In 1947 the mandate disintegrated and resulted in a call for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Following the Arab–Israel War of 1948, the Egypt–Israel General Armistice Agreement of February 1949 left Egypt ruling the Gaza Strip under a military administration. During the Arab–Israel War of 1956, Israel controlled the Gaza Strip from November until March of 1957, when it reverted to Egypt.

Since the Arab–Israel War of 1967, Gaza has been under Israeli military rule. The Palestinian uprising (or intifada) started in Gaza in 1987. In 1993 the Oslo peace process began with an agreement between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to implement limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank town of Jericho. The failure of the Camp David Summit (July 2000) effectively ended this process. The second Palestinian uprising, known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, has created unprecedented hardship for Palestinians, especially those living in the more impoverished Gaza Strip.

See also Aqsa Intifada, al-; Arab–Israel War (1948); Camp David Summit (2000); Gaza (City); Intifada (1987–1991); Muhammad; Negev; Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); Palestinians; West Bank.