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Gaza...
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The Gaza Strip is a narrow strip of land Forming the westernmost portion
of the Palestine region in Southwest Asia, it has land borders with
Egypt on
the west and Israel on the south and east, and is otherwise bounded by the
Mediterranean Sea on the north. 70% of it is under the jurisdiction of the
Palestinian Authority, while 30% (mainly the areas containing Israeli
settlements) is controlled by Israel. It is one of the most densely
populated occupied territories on earth, with a predominantly (99.4 percent)
Palestinian population. |
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Its borders were defined by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
armistice lines after the dissolution of the British mandate of Palestine,
when it was captured by Egypt. It acquired its name from
Gaza, its main
city. It was then captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1993, the
Oslo Accords brought much of the Strip into limited Palestinian Authority
control. In February 2005 the Israeli government voted to implement Israel's
unilateral disengagement plan of 2004, withdrawing from the Gaza strip
during the summer of 2005, including dismantling all the Israeli settlements
and removing all Israeli settlers from the strip. |
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Around 1.37 million Palestinians and about 8,000 Israelis
live in the Gaza Strip. The majority of the Palestinians are direct
descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel during the
1948 Arab-Israeli War. By 1967,
the population had grown about six-fold, and
the Strip's population has continued to increase since that time.
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Poverty, unemployment, and poor living conditions are
widespread as a result of the occupation. Since the 1970s, 25 Israeli
settlements have been constructed in the Gaza Strip, though as of
2005 the Israeli government plans to remove all Israelis from these
settlements. The Palestinian population is growing by around 4% a year. Most
residents of the strip are Palestinian Muslim, with small Palestinian
Christian (0.7%) and Israeli Jewish (0.6%) minorities. The Jewish settlers
in the Gaza Strip, Israeli citizens who migrated there after the
1967
Six-Day War, live only in guarded Israeli settlements. |
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