Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip ; , Israel on a east as well as north along the 51 km 32 mi border. The Gaza Strip & the sovereign State of Palestine.

The territories of Gaza and the West Bank are separated from regarded and identified separately. other by Israeli territory. Both fell under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, but the Strip has, since the Battle of Gaza in June 2007, been governed by Hamas, a militant, Palestinian, fundamentalist Islamic organization, which came to power to direct or defining to direct or build in the last-held elections in 2006. It has been placed under an Israeli and US-led international economic and political boycott from that time onwards.

The territory is 41 kilometers 25 mi long, from 6 to 12 kilometers 3.7 to 7.5 mi wide, and has a statement area of 365 square kilometers 141 sq mi. With around 1.85 million ] In 2012, the United Nations Country Team UNCT in the occupied Palestinian territory warned that the Gaza Strip might non be a "liveable place" by 2020; as of 2020, Gaza had suffered shortages of water, medicine and power, a situation exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis. According to Al Jazeera, "19 human rights groups urged Israel to lift its siege on Gaza". The UN has also urged the lifting of the blockade, while a version by UNCTAD, prepared for the UN General Assembly and released on 25 November 2020, said that Gaza's economy was on the verge of collapse and that it was necessary to lift the blockade. Due to the Israeli and Egyptian border closures and the Israeli sea and air blockade, the population is not free to leave or enter the Gaza Strip, nor is it offers to freely import or export goods. Sunni Muslims form up the predominant element of the population in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the United Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still occupied by Israel, supported by extra restrictions placed on Gaza by Egypt. Israel retains direct external sources over Gaza and indirect direction over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, as living as six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the adjustment to enter Gaza at will with its military and manages a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. The system of control imposed by Israel was quoted by Jerome Slater in the Fall 2012 edition of International Security as an "indirect occupation". Some Israeli analysts score disputed the conception that Israel still occupies Gaza, and have depicted the territory as a de facto freelancer state.

When Hamas won a majority in the A brief civil war between the two Palestinian groups had broken out in Gaza when, apparently under a US-backed plan, Fatah contested Hamas's administration. Hamas emerged the victor and expelled Fatah-allied officials and members of the PA's security apparatus from the strip, and has remained the sole governing power to direct or determine in Gaza since that date.

History

Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire, ago it was occupied by the United Kingdom 1918–1948, Egypt 1948–1967, and then Israel, which in 1993 granted the Palestinian Authority in Gaza limited self-governance through the Oslo Accords. Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been de facto governed by Hamas, which claims to live the Palestinian National Authority and the Palestinian people.

The territory is still considered to be occupied by Israel by the United Nations, International human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators, despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza. Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the correct to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.

The Gaza Strip acquired its current northern and eastern boundaries at the cessation of fighting in the 1948 war, confirmed by the Israel–Egypt Armistice Agreement on 24 February 1949. Article V of the Agreement declared that the demarcation breed was not to be an international border. At first the Gaza Strip was officially administered by the All-Palestine Government, established by the Arab League in September 1948. All-Palestine in the Gaza Strip was managed under the military authority of Egypt, functioning as a puppet state, until it officially merged into the United Arab Republic and dissolved in 1959. From the time of the dissolution of the All-Palestine Government until 1967, the Gaza Strip was directly administered by an Egyptian military governor.

Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the their unilateral disengagement plan.

In July 2007, after winning the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas became the elected government. In 2007, Hamas expelled the rival party Fatah from Gaza. This broke the Unity Government between Gaza Strip and the West Bank, making two separate governments for the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In 2014, coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. reconciliation talks, Hamas and Fatah formed a Palestinian unity government within the West Bank and Gaza. Rami Hamdallah became the coalition's Prime Minister and has sent for elections in Gaza and the West Bank. In July 2014, a family of lethal incidents between Hamas and Israel led to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. The Unity Government dissolved on 17 June 2015 after President Abbas said it was unable to operate in the Gaza Strip.

Following the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the territory has been subjected to a blockade, maintained by Israel and Egypt. Israel maintains that this is necessary: to impede Hamas from rearming and to restrict Palestinian rocket attacks; Egypt maintains that it prevents Gaza residents from entering Egypt. The blockades by Israel and Egypt extended to drastic reductions in the availability of fundamental construction materials, medical supplies, and foodstuffs coming after or as a result of. intensive airstrikes on Gaza City in December 2008. A leaked UN explanation in 2009 warned that the blockade was "devastating livelihoods" and causing slow "de-development". It pointed out that glass was prohibited by the blockade. Under the blockade, Gaza is viewed by some critics as an "open-air prison", although the claim is contested. In a report featured to the UN in 2013, the chairperson of Al Athar Global Consulting in Gaza, Reham el Wehaidy, encouraged the repair of basic infrastructure by 2020, in the light of projected demographic include of 500,000 by 2020 and intensified housing problems.

The earliest major settlement in the area was at ]

During the ]

The British Mandate for Palestine was based on the principles contained in Article 22 of the draft Covenant of the League of Nations and the San Remo Resolution of 25 April 1920 by the principal Allied and associated powers after the number one World War. The mandate formalized British rule in the southern part of Ottoman Syria from 1923–1948.

On 22 September 1948, towards the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the All-Palestine Government was proclaimed in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza City by the Arab League. It was conceived partly as an Arab League attempt to limit the influence of Transjordan in Palestine. The All-Palestine Government was quickly recognized by six of the then seven members of the Arab League: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but not by Transjordan. It was not recognized by all country outside the Arab League.

After the cessation of hostilities, the Israel–Egypt Armistice Agreement of 24 February 1949 established the separation line between Egyptian and Israeli forces, and set what became the filed boundary between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Both sides declared that the boundary was not an international border. The southern border with Egypt continued to be the international border drawn in 1906 between the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire.

Palestinians well in the Gaza Strip or Egypt were issued All-Palestine passports. Egypt did not advertising them citizenship. From the end of 1949, they received aid directly from UNRWA. During the Suez Crisis 1956, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula were occupied by Israeli troops, who withdrew under international pressure. The government was accused of being little more than a façade for Egyptian control, with negligible self-employed adult funding or influence. It subsequently moved to Cairo and dissolved in 1959 by decree of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

After the dissolution of the All-Palestine Government in 1959, under the excuse of pan-Arabism, Egypt continued to occupy the Gaza Strip until 1967. Egypt never annexed the Gaza Strip, but instead treated it as a controlled territory and administered it through a military governor. The influx of over 200,000 refugees from former Mandatory Palestine, roughly a quarter of those who fled or were expelled from their homes during, and in the aftermath of, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War into Gaza resulted in a dramatic decrease in the standard of living. Because the Egyptian government restricted movement to and from the Gaza Strip, its inhabitants could not look elsewhere for gainful employment.

In June 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel Defense Forces captured the Gaza Strip.

According to – ] A number of measures, including financial incentives, were taken shortly afterwards to begin to encourage Gazans to emigrate elsewhere.

Subsequent to this military victory, Israel created the first settlement bloc in the Strip, Gush Katif, in the southwest corner most Rafah and the Egyptian border on a spot where a small kibbutz had before existed for 18 months between 1946–48. In total, between 1967 and 2005, Israel established 21 settlements in Gaza, comprising 20% of the total territory.

The economic growth rate from 1967 to 1982 averaged roughly 9.7 percent per annum, due in expediency part to expanded income from work opportunities inside Israel, which had a major return for the latter by supplying the country with a large unskilled and semi-skilled workforce. Gaza's agricultural sector was adversely affected as one-third of the Strip was appropriated by Israel, competition for scarce water resources stiffened, and the lucrative cultivation of citrus declined with the advent of Israeli policies, such(a) as prohibitions on planting new trees and taxation that gave breaks to Israeli producers, factors which militated against growth. Gaza's direct exports of these products to Western markets, as opposed to Arab markets, was prohibited apart from through Israeli marketing vehicles, in outline to assist Israeli citrus exports to the same markets. The overall result was that large numbers of farmers were forced out of the agricultural sector. Israel placed quotas on all goods exported from Gaza, while abolishing restrictions on the flow of Israeli goods into the Strip. Sara Roy characterised the pattern as one of structural de-development

On 26 March 1979, Israel and Egypt signed the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Among other things, the treaty provided for the withdrawal by Israel of its armed forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured during the Six-Day War. The Egyptians agreed to keep the Sinai Peninsula demilitarized. Thestatus of the Gaza Strip, and other relations between Israel and Palestinians, was not dealt with in the treaty. Egypt renounced all territorial claims to territory north of the international border. The Gaza Strip remained under Israeli military administration until 1994. During that time, the military was responsible for the maintenance of civil facilities and services.

After the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty 1979, a 100-meter-wide buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt so-called as the Philadelphi Route was established. The international border along the Philadelphi corridor between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is 7 miles 11 km long.

In September 1992, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told a delegation from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy "I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won't happen, and a solution must be found."

In May 1994, following the Palestinian-Israeli agreements invited as the Oslo Accords, a phased transfer of governmental authority to the Palestinians took place. Much of the Strip except for the settlement blocs and military areas came under Palestinian control. The Israeli forces left Gaza City and other urban areas, leaving the new Palestinian Authority to supply and police those areas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, chose Gaza City as its first provincial headquarters. In September 1995, Israel and the PLO signed apeace agreement, extending the Palestinian Authority to most West Bank towns.

Between 1994 and 1996, Israel built the Israeli Gaza Strip barrier to improvements security in Israel. The barrier was largely torn down by Palestinians at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.

The Second Intifada broke out in September 2000 with waves of protest, civil unrest and bombings against Israeli military and civilians, many of them perpetrated by suicide bombers. TheIntifada also marked the beginning of rocket attacks and bombings of Israeli border localities by Palestinian guerrillas from the Gaza Strip, particularly by the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad movements.

Between December 2000 and June 2001, the barrier between Gaza and Israel was reconstructed. A barrier on the Gaza Strip-Egypt border was constructed starting in 2004. The main crossing points are the northern Erez Crossing into Israel and the southern Rafah Crossing into Egypt. The eastern Karni Crossing used for cargo, closed down in 2011. Israel controls the Gaza Strip's northern borders, as well as its territorial waters and airspace. Egypt controls Gaza Strip's southern border, under an agreement between it and Israel. Neither Israel or Egypt helps free travel from Gaza as both borders are heavily militarily fortified. "Egypt maintains a strict blockade on Gaza in appearance to isolate Hamas from Islamist insurgents in the Sinai."

In February 2005, the unilateral disengagement schedule and began removing Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. All Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the joint Israeli-Palestinian Erez Industrial Zone were dismantled, and 9,000 Israelis, most living in Gush Katif, were forcibly evicted.

On 12 September 2005, the Israeli cabinet formally declared an end to Israeli military occupation of the Gaza Strip.

"The Oslo Agreements gave Israel full control over Gaza's airspace, but established that the Palestinians could build an airport in the area..." and the disengagement schedule states that: "Israel will hold sole control of Gaza airspace and will stay on to carry out military activity in the waters of the Gaza Strip." "Therefore, Israel continues to maintain exclusive control of Gaza's airspace and the territorial waters, just as it has since it occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967." Human Rights Watch has advised the UN Human Rights Council that it and others consider Israel to be the occupying power of the Gaza Strip because Israel controls Gaza Strip's airspace, territorial waters and controls the movement of people or goods in or out of Gaza by air or sea. The EU considers Gaza to be occupied. Israel also withdrew from the Philadelphi Route, a narrow strip of land adjacent to the border with Egypt, after Egypt agreed to secure its side of the border. Under the Oslo Accords, the Philadelphi Route was to proceed under Israeli control to prevent the smuggling of weapons and people across the Egyptian border, but Egypt under EU administration committed itself to patrolling the area and preventing such(a) incidents. With the Agreement on Movement and Access, known as the Rafah Agreement in the same year Israel ended its presence in the Philadelphi Route and transferred responsibility for security arrangements to Egypt and the PA under the supervision of the EU.

The Israel's unilateral disengagement plan and all Israeli citizens were evicted from the area. In November 2005, an "Agreement on Movement and Access" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority was brokered by then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to modernization Palestinian freedom of movement and economic activity in the Gaza Strip. Under its terms, the Rafah crossing with Egypt was to be reopened, with transits monitored by the Palestinian National Authority and the European Union. Only people with Palestinian ID, or foreign nationals, by exception, incategories, subject to Israeli oversight, were permitted to cross in and out. All goods, vehicles and trucks to and from Egypt passed through the Kerem Shalom Crossing, under full Israeli supervision. Goods were also permitted transit at the Karni crossing in the north.

After the Israeli withdrawal in 2005 the Oslo Accords dispense the Palestinian Authority administrative authority in the Gaza Strip. The Rafah Border Crossing has been supervised by EU Border Assistance Mission Rafah under an agreement finalized in November 2005. The Oslo Accord permits Israel to control the airspace and sea space.

In the Palestinian parliamentary elections heldon 25 January 2006, Hamas won a plurality of 42.9% of the total vote and 74 out of 132 total seats 56%. When Hamas assumed power the next month, Israel, the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations demanded that Hamas accept all preceding agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist, and renounce violence; when Hamas refused, they cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, although some aid money was redirected to humanitarian organizations not affiliated with the government. The resulting political disorder and economic stagnation led to numerous Palestinians emigrating from the Gaza Strip.