Gaza: Palestinian territory ravaged by wars, poverty

GAZA CITY: The Gaza Strip is a poverty-stricken and overcrowded Palestinian coastal enclave which is being run by the Palestinian movement Hamas after it seized power 10 years ago.
Hamas won a landslide electoral victory over Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement on Jan. 25, 2006, but it took control of Gaza on June 15, 2007 following fierce fighting with Fatah supporters.
The territory is facing a strict Israeli blockade, while its border with Egypt has also been largely closed in recent years.
Hamas is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the US and the EU.
Situated on the Mediterranean coast, between Israel and Egypt, the Gaza Strip is home to around 2 million Palestinians.
They live in a cramped area of just 362 sq km, making it one of the most densely populated territories on the planet.
After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 and the formation of the Jewish state of Israel, Gaza came under Egyptian administration, but was never annexed.
Israel seized the territory from Egypt during the June 1967 Six-Day War.
On Sept. 12, 2005, Israel pulled out all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in a unilateral move, which ended 38 years of occupation. In the summer of 2006, following the capture of a soldier by Hamas men, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza which was tightened a year later after Hamas forcibly ousted troops loyal to Fatah. Since the ousting of Egypt’s President Mohammed Mursi in 2013, the only entrance to Gaza not controlled by Israel, Rafah, has been almost completely closed by Cairo.
According to the World Bank, Gaza’s GDP losses caused by the blockade are estimated at more than 50 percent.
The Gaza Strip has almost no industry and it suffers from a chronic lack of water and fuel.
Unemployment stands at 45 percent and more than two thirds of the population depends on humanitarian aid.
On Feb. 27-March 3, 2008, Israel carried out operation “Hot Winter” following the death of an Israeli from rocket fire from Gaza. More than 120 Palestinians were killed.
Unrest continued — Gaza rocket fire and Israeli attacks — in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed until a truce was concluded in June.
On Dec. 27, Israel launched a vast air offensive — “Operation Cast Lead” — in a bid to put an end to Palestinian rocket fire. On Jan. 18, 2009 a cease-fire came into force to end the Israeli operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Beginning Nov. 14, 2012, Israel’s “Operation Pillar of Defense” was launched with a missile strike that kills top Hamas commander Ahmed Jaabari. In the ensuring 8-day flare-up, 177 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed before an Egypt-brokered truce takes effect.
On July 8, 2014, Israel launched “Operation Protective Edge” against Gaza with the aim of ending rocket fire and destroying smuggling and militant tunnels dug from the enclave. The war left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side and 74 on the Israeli side.
The Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad is the enclave’s second biggest force after Hamas.
Founded early in the 1980s in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a close ally and ideological inspiration, it is devoted to armed action.
In May, Islamic Jihad rejected Hamas’s new policy of somewhat easing its stand on Israel and accepting the establishment of a Palestinian state limited to the 1967 borders.