The Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip is a rectangle along the Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt. The majority of its approximately 1.4 million residents are Palestinian refugees, many of whom have been living in refugee camps for decades; 80 percent were estimated to be living in poverty in mid-2007, a figure that has doubtless grown. Its population density is among the world’s highest, at an average of more than 3,000 people per square mile.
In 1967, following a war between Israel and the countries of Syiria, Jordan and Egypt, Israel military occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. That year, The United Nation Security Council passed Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw the troops from the occupied territories. Israel never complies. Today, 3 million Palestinians live under illegal military occupation. Today, the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians are plagued by daily violence and insecurity.
Under the Oslo peace accords signed into 1993, Gaza was turned over to the newly created Palestinian Authority, to form one wing of a nascent Palestinian state, along with the West Bank and a potential land corridor between them. Yassir Arafat, the president of the authority and leader of the Fatah movement, ruled both areas. But as the years passed, it became clear that the Fatah party had less of a hold on Gaza than on the West Bank. Hamas, the political party denounced as a terrorist group by the United States and Israel, became steadily more popular in Gaza, both because of the social services it provided and because of its more militant stance.
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