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Gaza Strip

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The Gaza Strip (locally Qita Ghazzah) is a narrow strip of land in the southwest of Palestine, currently occupied by Israel. At the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it was under Egyptian control, under which it remained until it was occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967.

It is theoretically run by the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is not permitted conventional military forces; there are, however, a Public Security Force and a civil Police Force.

Demographics

Around 1.2 million Palestinians live in the Gaza strip, mostly refugees who fled Israel in the 1948 war; as a result it has one of the highest population densities in the world. Since 1967, around 25 Israeli settlements have been constructed in the Gaza Strip, which contain around five thousand people. These setters occupy several orders of magnitude more land per capita than the Palestinian population.

The population is growing by around 4% a year. Most people in the strip are Muslim, with a small minority Christian (0.7%) or Jewish (0.6%). The chief language is Arabic, but Hebrew and English are widely understood.

  • Birth rate: 41.85 births/1,000 population
  • Death rate: 4.12 deaths/1,000 population
  • net migration: 1.73 migrant(s)/1,000 population
  • infant mortality: 24.76 deaths/1,000 live births
  • fertility: 6.29 children born/woman

Geography

The Gaza Strip is located in the Middle East (at 31 25 N, 34 20 E) and consists of around 360sq km. It has an 11km border with Egypt, near the city of Rafah, and a 51km border with Israel. It has a 40 km coastline onto the Mediterranean Sea, but has no maritime claims due to Israeli occupation.

The Gaza Strip has a temperate climate, with mild winters, and dry and hot summers, subject to drought. The terrain is flat or rolling, with dunes near the coast. The highest point is Abu 'Awdah (Joz Abu 'Auda), at 105 metres above sea level. Main resources are arable land (about a third of the strip is irrigated), and recently discovered natural gas. Environmental issues include desertification; salination of fresh water; sewage treatment; water-borne disease; soil degradation; and depletion and contamination of underground water resources.

Transport and communication

The Gaza strip has a single railway line, abandoned and in disrepair, little trackage remains. It has a small, poorly developed road network. Its one port is Gaza City. It has two airports, one paved, one unpaved, including Gaza International Airport, which opened on 24 November 1998 as part of agreements stipulated in the September 1995 Oslo II Accord and the 23 October 1998 Wye River Memorandum. GIA has been largely closed since October 2000 by Israeli orders and its runway was destroyed by the Israel Defense Force in December 2001.

The Gaza strip has a rudimentary telephone services provided by an open wire system, two TV stations run by the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, and no radio stations. It has three ISPs. Most Palestinian households have a radio and a TV, but there are no figures available.

See also:

See also Gaza, Gaza City

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