GAZA STRIP

Territory about 28 miles long and from 4 to 8 miles wide (230 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast between the Egyptian Sinai Desert and the southern frontier of Israel. It contains the cities of Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah, as well as eight refugee camps and twenty-five Israeli settlements and military areas. The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions of the world. In 2003 its population was estimated at 1,330,000 Palestinians and 5,000 Israeli settlers. The settlers and military areas occupy about 40 percent of the land. Along with the rest of Palestine, this area was under British control from 1918 and was part of the British Mandate from 1922 to 1948. After the creation of the State of Israel and the Arab-Israel War of 1948–1949, the area came to be called the Gaza Strip and fell under Egyptian administration but was given an autonomous status. Before 1948 the Gaza Strip had around 70,000 inhabitants; during and after the war it absorbed 250,000 Palestinian refugees. It became the scene of numerous frontier incidents between Egypt and Israel caused by anti-Israel operations mounted by Palestinian groups. At the time of the Suez-Sinai War of October 1956, the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip experienced their first occupation by the Israel Defense Force (IDF), which led to a renaissance of Palestine nationalism. Israeli troops occupied
Gaza until March 1957, when United Nations forces took over and were themselves later replaced by an Egyptian regiment. During the War of June 1967, the Israeli Army reoccupied the Gaza Strip, which by then was home to 360,000 people. The Israeli government placed the area under its definitive control, encouraging the building of Jewish settlements and expelling about 40,000 people from Gaza, mostly to the West Bank.

From 1967 to 1971 the Palestinian resistance struggled against the Israeli occupation. Numerous Palestinian activists were imprisoned by the Israeli authorities or were exiled to Lebanon. Political figures in Gaza and the West Bank (also occupied by Israel) formed a Palestinian National Front that advocated the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. From May 1979, as required by the Camp David Accords, Egypt and Israel started negotiating the autonomy of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These talks were not successful because of the opposition of most Gazans, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, to the Camp David Accords. Both President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt and the Israeli government imposed sanctions on the Gazans for their opposition. In April 1980 the Egyptian president proposed that autonomy first be applied in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis placed it under a civilian administration in 1981. The departure of Palestinian forces from Lebanon in 1982 and frictions within Fatah thwarted any lingering impulse to revolt on the part of the Palestinians from within for several years. In 1987, however, not only was HAMAS born in the Gaza Strip, but that December the first Intifada began. The "war of stones" against the IDF lasted almost six years. In March 1993 the Israelis closed Gaza to the outside world, which resulted in an economic decline. This closure has remained in effect, either in full or in part, ever since. In 1994, during the application of the Oslo Accords, approximately 60 percent of the Gaza Strip and a part of the West Bank attained administrative autonomy under the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Yasir Arafat. Some security matters remained under Israeli control. The stalling of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the final status of the Palestinian territories caused new waves of anti-Israel attacks, as well as a further increase in unemployment, which affected more than half the population. The al-Aqsa Intifada, which began in 2000, worsened the situation. The Israelis responded by carrying out planned assassinations and an increasingly intense program of intimidation by military means. In May and June 2004 the Israelis invaded in force, particularly in the refugee camp at Rafah. Under the pretext of looking for tunnels under the Egyptian border and increasing open security areas near the border, they killed dozens of people and destroyed hundreds of houses.

In 2004 Ariel Sharon's government was promoting a plan that would involve Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip and the abandonment of the settlements there but whose acceptance by the PA would entail implicit Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to unlimited settlement and unilateral determination of borders in the West Bank. In October 2004 the Knesset voted to back Sharon's plan to remove Israeli troops, as well as twenty-one settlements from Gaza and four small settlements from the northern part of the West Bank. The vote—sixty-seven for, forty-five against, and seven abstentions—marked the first time in twenty years that the parliament had favored the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the region. Fearing an extended delay in the start of the withdrawal process, Sharon rejected his Likud Party's call for a referendum on leaving Gaza, thereby splitting the ruling Likud and creating turmoil in the political landscape.

SEE ALSO Aqsa Intifada, al-;Arab-Israel War (1967);Arafat, Yasir Muhammad;British Mandate;Camp David Accords;Fatah, al-;HAMAS;Intifada (1987–1993);Israel Defense Force;Oslo Accords;Oslo Accords II;Palestine Liberation Organization;Palestine Authority;Palestinian National Front;Sadat, Anwar al-;Sharon, Ariel;Suez Crisis;West Bank.