Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip
قطاع غزة
Status
  • Claimed by the State of Palestine[a]
  • Under the Palestinian National Authority according to the Oslo Accords[1]
  • Previously regarded as an Israeli-occupied territory due to the Gaza blockade[b]
  • De facto fully administered by Hamas from 14 June 2007 until 27 October 2023, when an ongoing military operation in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces began.[c]
  • Israel currently controls ~65% of the Strip.[7]
Capital
and largest city
Gaza City
31°30′53″N 34°27′15″E / 31.51472°N 34.45417°E / 31.51472; 34.45417
Official languagesArabic
Ethnic groups
Palestinian Arabs
Religion
  • 99% Sunni Islam (official)
  • <1% Christianity
Demonym(s)Gazan
Palestinian
Government
• Provisional government
Hamas administration
Area
• Total
365 km2 (141 sq mi)
Population
• 2025 estimate
~2,050,000[8]
• Density
5,967.5/km2 (15,455.8/sq mi)
CurrencyIsraeli new shekel
Egyptian pound[9]
Time zoneUTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)
UTC+3 (EEST)
Calling code+970
ISO 3166 codePS

The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza,[d] is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Inhabited mostly by Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Gaza is one of the most densely populated territories in the world. An end of 2024 estimate puts the population of the Strip at 2.1 million, which was a 6% decline from the previous year due to the Gaza war.[11] Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north. Its capital and largest city is Gaza City.[12]

The territorial boundaries were established while Gaza was controlled by the Kingdom of Egypt at the conclusion of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. During that period the All-Palestine Protectorate, also known as All-Palestine, was established with limited recognition and it became a refuge for Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestine war.[13][14] Later, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip, initiating its decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territories.[13][14] The mid-1990s Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a limited governing authority, initially led by the secular party Fatah until that party's electoral defeat in 2006 to the Sunni Islamic Hamas. Hamas would then take over the governance of Gaza in the Battle of Gaza the next year,[15][16] subsequently warring with Israel.

The restrictions on movement and goods in Gaza imposed by Israel date back to the early 1990s.[17] In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its military forces from Gaza, dismantled its settlements, and implemented a temporary blockade of Gaza.[18] The blockade became indefinite after the 2007 Hamas takeover.[19][18] Egypt also began its blockade of Gaza in 2007.

Despite the previous Israeli disengagement, Gaza was still considered as being occupied by Israel under international law,[20][21] and was called an "open-air prison".[22][23] Israel's actions in Gaza since the start of the war that began in 2023 have resulted in large-scale loss of life, mass population displacement, a humanitarian crisis, and an ongoing famine.[24][25] These actions have been described by scholars, international law experts, and human-rights organizations as constituting a genocide against the Palestinian people.[26][27] A provisional ceasefire began in mid-January 2025, lasting two months.

The Gaza Strip is 41 kilometres (25 miles) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide, and has a total area of 365 km2 (141 sq mi).[28][29] As of 2010, the Strip's population mostly comprised Palestinians and refugees. It has a high proportion of youth, with 43.5% being children 14 or younger and 50% under age of 18.[30] Sunni Islam is almost ubiquitous, with a Palestinian Christian minority. Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 1.99% (2023 est.), the 39th-highest in the world.[29] Gaza's unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, with an overall unemployment rate of 46% and a youth unemployment rate of 70%.[19][31] Despite this, the area's 97% literacy rate is higher than that of nearby Egypt, while youth literacy is 88%.[32] Gaza has throughout the years been seen as a source of Palestinian nationalism and resistance.[33][34][35]

, Palestine


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Hedges, Chris (5 May 1994). "Mideast accord: the overview; Rabin and Arafat sign accord ending Israel's 27-year hold on Jericho and the Gaza Strip". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 December 2020.
  2. ^ Sanger, Andrew (2011). "The Contemporary Law of Blockade and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla". In Schmitt, M. N.; Arimatsu, Louise; McCormack, Tim (eds.). Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law - 2010. Vol. 13. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 429. doi:10.1007/978-90-6704-811-8_14. ISBN 978-90-6704-811-8. Israel claims it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip, maintaining that it is neither a State nor a territory occupied or controlled by Israel, but rather it has 'sui generis' status. Pursuant to the Disengagement Plan, Israel dismantled all military institutions and settlements in Gaza and there is no longer a permanent Israeli military or civilian presence in the territory. However, the Plan also provided that Israel will guard and monitor the external land perimeter of the Gaza Strip, will continue to maintain exclusive authority in Gaza air space, and will continue to exercise security activity in the sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip as well as maintaining an Israeli military presence on the Egyptian-Gaza border, and reserving the right to reenter Gaza at will. Israel continues to control all of Gaza's seven land crossings, its maritime borders and airspace and the movement of goods and persons in and out of the territory. Egypt controls one of Gaza's land crossings. Gaza is also dependent on Israel for water, electricity, telecommunications and other utilities, currency, issuing IDs, and permits to enter and leave the territory. Israel also has sole control of the Palestinian Population Registry through which the Israeli Army regulates who is classified as a Palestinian and who is a Gazan or West Banker. Since 2000 aside from a limited number of exceptions Israel has refused to add people to the Palestinian Population Registry. It is this direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza that has led the United Nations, the UN General Assembly, the UN Fact Finding Mission to Gaza, International human rights organisations, US Government websites, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a significant number of legal commentators, to reject the argument that Gaza is no longer occupied.
    * Scobbie, Iain (2012). Elizabeth Wilmshurst (ed.). International Law and the Classification of Conflicts. Oxford University Press. p. 295. ISBN 978-0-19-965775-9. Even after the accession to power of Hamas, Israel's claim that it no longer occupies Gaza has not been accepted by UN bodies, most States, nor the majority of academic commentators because of its exclusive control of its border with Gaza and crossing points including the effective control it exerted over the Rafah crossing until at least May 2011, its control of Gaza's maritime zones and airspace which constitute what Aronson terms the 'security envelope' around Gaza, as well as its ability to intervene forcibly at will in Gaza.
    * Gawerc, Michelle (2012). Prefiguring Peace: Israeli-Palestinian Peacebuilding Partnerships. Lexington Books. p. 44. ISBN 9780739166109. Archived from the original on 28 February 2023. Retrieved 8 November 2016. While Israel withdrew from the immediate territory, it remained in control of all access to and from Gaza through the border crossings, as well as through the coastline and the airspace. In addition, Gaza was dependent upon Israel for water, electricity sewage communication networks and for its trade (Gisha 2007. Dowty 2008). In other words, while Israel maintained that its occupation of Gaza ended with its unilateral disengagement Palestinians – as well as many human rights organizations and international bodies – argued that Gaza was by all intents and purposes still occupied.
  3. ^ Cuyckens, Hanne (1 October 2016). "Is Israel Still an Occupying Power in Gaza?". Netherlands International Law Review. 63 (3): 275–295. doi:10.1007/s40802-016-0070-1. ISSN 0165-070X.
  4. ^ Cuyckens, Hanne (2016). "Is Israel Still an Occupying Power in Gaza?". Netherlands International Law Review. 63 (3): 275–295. doi:10.1007/s40802-016-0070-1. ISSN 0165-070X.
  5. ^ Beaule, Victoria; Ferris, Layla (5 January 2024). "Visual analysis shows 60% of Gaza now under evacuation orders". ABC News. Archived from the original on 2 April 2024. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
  6. ^ Michaeli, Yarden; Scharf, Avi (28 March 2024). "Buffer Zone and Control Corridor: What the Israeli Army's Entrenchment in Gaza Looks Like". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 1 April 2024. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
  7. ^ "July 4: IDF says it holds 'operational control' over roughly 65% of Gaza Strip". The Times of Israel. 4 July 2025. Retrieved 8 July 2025.
  8. ^ "Did a 'Harvard report' reveal 377,000 Gazans are 'missing'? The number has been misinterpreted". France24. 20 June 2025.
  9. ^ Chami, Ralph; Espinoza, Raphael; Montiel, Peter J. (26 January 2021). Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-885309-1. Archived from the original on 11 April 2023. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  10. ^ The New Oxford Dictionary of English. 1998. p. 761. ISBN 0-19-861263-X. "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza...".
  11. ^ "Gaza population down by 6% since start of war - Palestinian statistics bureau". Reuters. 1 January 2025.
  12. ^ Fabian, Emanuel (25 May 2025). "IDF aims to capture 75% of Gaza Strip in 2 months in new offensive against Hamas". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 11 June 2025.
  13. ^ a b "Gaza Strip | Definition, History, Facts, & Map | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 6 September 2024. Archived from the original on 19 October 2023. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  14. ^ a b Samson, Elizabeth (2010). "Is Gaza Occupied: Redefining the Status of Gaza under International Law". American University International Law Review. 25: 915. Archived from the original on 22 November 2023. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
  15. ^ Dunning, Tristan (2016). Hamas, Jihad and Popular Legitimacy: Reinterpreting Resistance in Palestine. Routledge. p. 212. ISBN 978-1-317-38495-3. Archived from the original on 2 November 2022. Since taking sole control of Gaza in June 2007, Hamas has proven itself to be a remarkably resilient and resourceful government entity. The movement has clearly entrenched itself as the hegemonic power in the coastal enclave to such an extent that the International Crisis Group contends that the power struggle in Gaza is no longer between Hamas and Fatah. Rather the main source of confrontation is between Hamas and other more hardline Islamists and salafists. . . Hamas has been far more successful in an administrative sense than the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, despite having access to only a fraction of the resources.
  16. ^
    • Joshua Castellino, Kathleen A. Cavanaugh, Minority Rights in the Middle East, Archived 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine Oxford University Press 2013 p.150:'Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza constitute a majority (demographically) with representation by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), a self-governing body run by Fatah in the West Bank, and by Hamas in the Gaza Strip'.
    • David Rose, 'The Gaza Bombshell,' Archived 28 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine Vanity Fair April, 2008. 'The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. . But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.'
    • Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza, p.45 Archived 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine. 'Dahlan, who was supported by U.S. officials, has been a bitter enemy of Hamas since his 1996 crackdown on the movement. He consistently refused to accept the Palestinian unity government brokered by the Saudi government in the Mecca Agreement "and made his opposition intolerable to Hamas when he refused to subject the security forces under his command, armed and trained by the U.S., to the legitimate Palestinian unity government as agreed between Hamas and Fatah." Alistair Crooke, a former Middle East adviser to the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, similarly observed, "Dahlan refused to deal with (the independent interior minister appointed to the unity government), and put his troops on the streets in defiance of the interior minister. Hamas felt that they had little option but to take control of security away from forces which were in fact creating insecurity." Hence, Hamas was not attempting a coup against the government or the Fatah organization as a whole but also against Dahlan's U.S.-funded militia (and individual Fatah loyalists it blamed for the murder of Hamas members).'
  17. ^ "Preliminary Assessment Of The Economic Impact Of The Destruction In Gaza". Archived from the original on 5 April 2024. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
  18. ^ a b Alfarsi, Haroun (10 October 2023). "Gaza Strip Blockade: Explained". Profolus. Archived from the original on 30 May 2024. Retrieved 30 May 2024.
  19. ^ a b "Gaza Strip: devastated by conflict and Israel's economic blockade". Reuters. 12 October 2023. Archived from the original on 13 November 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  20. ^ Sanger, Andrew (2011). "The Contemporary Law of Blockade and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla". In Schmitt, M. N.; Arimatsu, Louise; McCormack, Tim (eds.). Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law - 2010. Vol. 13. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 429. doi:10.1007/978-90-6704-811-8_14. ISBN 978-90-6704-811-8. Israel claims it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip, maintaining that it is neither a State nor a territory occupied or controlled by Israel, but rather it has 'sui generis' status. Pursuant to the Disengagement Plan, Israel dismantled all military institutions and settlements in Gaza and there is no longer a permanent Israeli military or civilian presence in the territory. However the Plan also provided that Israel will guard and monitor the external land perimeter of the Gaza Strip, will continue to maintain exclusive authority in Gaza air space, and will continue to exercise security activity in the sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip as well as maintaining an Israeli military presence on the Egyptian-Gaza border. and reserving the right to reenter Gaza at will.
    Israel continues to control six of Gaza's seven land crossings, its maritime borders and airspace and the movement of goods and persons in and out of the territory. Egypt controls one of Gaza's land crossings. Troops from the Israeli Defence Force regularly enter pans of the territory and/or deploy missile attacks, drones and sonic bombs into Gaza. Israel has declared a no-go buffer zone that stretches deep into Gaza: if Gazans enter this zone they are shot on sight. Gaza is also dependent on Israel for water, electricity, telecommunications and other utilities, currency, issuing IDs, and permits to enter and leave the territory. Israel also has sole control of the Palestinian Population Registry through which the Israeli Army regulates who is classified as a Palestinian and who is a Gazan or West Banker. Since 2000 aside from a limited number of exceptions Israel has refused to add people to the Palestinian Population Registry.
    It is this direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza that has led the United Nations, the UN General Assembly, the UN Fact Finding Mission to Gaza, International human rights organisations, US Government websites, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a significant number of legal commentators, to reject the argument that Gaza is no longer occupied.
  21. ^
    • "Military occupation of Palestine by Israel". Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project. 18 May 2014. Archived from the original on 4 April 2022. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
    • Scobbie, Iain (2012). Elizabeth Wilmshurst (ed.). International Law and the Classification of Conflicts. Oxford University Press. p. 295. ISBN 978-0-19-965775-9. Even after the accession to power of Hamas, Israel's claim that it no longer occupies Gaza has not been accepted by UN bodies, most States, nor the majority of academic commentators because of its exclusive control of its border with Gaza and crossing points including the effective control it exerted over the Rafah crossing until at least May 2011, its control of Gaza's maritime zones and airspace which constitute what Aronson terms the 'security envelope' around Gaza, as well as its ability to intervene forcibly at will in Gaza.
    • Gawerc, Michelle (2012). Prefiguring Peace: Israeli-Palestinian Peacebuilding Partnerships. Lexington Books. p. 44. ISBN 9780739166109. Archived from the original on 28 February 2023. Retrieved 8 November 2016. While Israel withdrew from the immediate territory, it remained in control of all access to and from Gaza through the border crossings, as well as through the coastline and the airspace. In addition, Gaza was dependent upon Israel for water, electricity sewage communication networks and for its trade (Gisha 2007. Dowty 2008). In other words, while Israel maintained that its occupation of Gaza ended with its unilateral disengagement Palestinians – as well as many human right organizations and international bodies – argued that Gaza was by all intents and purposes still occupied.
  22. ^ Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector, Archived 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine Princeton University Press, 2013 p.41:'Hamas's democratic victory, however, was short-lived . .followed as it was in June 2006 by an Israeli and US-led international political and economic boycott of the new Palestinian government. The boycott amounted to a form of collective punishment against the entire Palestinian population and, to my knowledge, was the first time in the history of the conflict that the international community imposed sanctions on the occupied rather than the occupier.'
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference open-air prison was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Dannenbaum, Tom; Dill, Janina (2024). "International Law in Gaza: Belligerent Intent and Provisional Measures". American Journal of International Law. 118 (4): 659–683. doi:10.1017/ajil.2024.53.
  25. ^ "GAZA STRIP: Famine confirmed in Gaza Governorate, projected to expand | 1 July - 30 September 2025" (PDF). Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. 22 August 2025.
  26. ^
    • Dumper, Michael; Badran, Amneh (2024). "Introduction". In Dumper, Michael; Badran, Amneh (eds.). Routledge Handbook on Palestine (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 2. doi:10.4324/9781003031994. ISBN 9781003031994. In this context we should not overlook the latest turning point in the history of Palestine – the attack by Hamas on 7th October 2023 on Israeli settlements adjacent to Gaza and the subsequent genocidal war that the state of Israel has carried out in the Gaza strip
    • Speri, Alice (20 December 2024). "Defining genocide: how a rift over Gaza sparked a crisis among scholars". Guardian. Retrieved 23 December 2024.
    • Narea, Nicole (25 October 2024). "Is Israel committing genocide? Reexamining the question, a year later". Vox. Archived from the original on 27 October 2024. Retrieved 28 October 2024.
    • Albanese, Francesca (25 March 2024). Anatomy of a Genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese (PDF) (Report). United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. p. 1. By analysing the patterns of violence and Israeli policies in its onslaught on Gaza, the present report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been met
    • Amnesty International (2024). 'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians In Gaza (PDF) (Report). p. 13. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 December 2024. This report focuses on the Israeli authorities' policies and actions in Gaza as part of the military offensive they launched in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 while situating them within the broader context of Israel's unlawful occupation, and system of apartheid against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. It assesses allegations of violations and crimes under international law by Israel in Gaza within the framework of genocide under international law, concluding that there is sufficient evidence to believe that Israel's conduct in Gaza following 7 October 2023 amounts to genocide.
    • Traverso, Enzo (2024). Gaza Faces History. Other Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-63542-555-0. The only normative definition we have, codified at the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, accurately describes the current situation in Palestine ... describes exactly what is happening in Gaza today
    • "One year of denouncing the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza". International Federation for Human Rights. 12 December 2024. Retrieved 4 June 2025. One year ago, the FIDH International Board, its governing body elected by all its member organisations, recognised, after extensive debate and examination, that Israel was carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza
    • B'Tselem (July 2025). Our Genocide (PDF) (Report). p. 86. The review presented in this report leaves no room for doubt: since October 2023, the Israeli regime has been responsible for carrying out genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Killing tens of thousands of people; causing bodily or mental harm to hundreds of thousands more; destroying homes and civilian infrastructure on a massive scale; starvation, displacement, and denying humanitarian aid — all this is being perpetrated systematically, as part of a coordinated attack aimed at annihilating all facets of life in the Gaza Strip.
  27. ^
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference Arnon was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ a b Gaza Strip Archived 12 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine Entry at the CIA World Factbook
  30. ^ Norman G. Finkelstein (2018). Gaza. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-29571-1. Archived from the original on 11 March 2024. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  31. ^ Humaid, Maram. "Gaza graduates demand UNRWA solutions for high unemployment rate". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 13 November 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  32. ^ "World Bank Open Data". World Bank Open Data. Archived from the original on 26 May 2023. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  33. ^ Sara M. Roy (2016). The Gaza Strip. Institute for Palestine Studies USA, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-88728-321-5. Archived from the original on 11 March 2024. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  34. ^ Filiu, Jean-Pierre (1 November 2014). "The Twelve Wars on Gaza" (PDF). Journal of Palestine Studies. 44 (1): 52–60. doi:10.1525/jps.2014.44.1.52. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 April 2024. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  35. ^ Rynhold, Jonathan; Waxman, Dov (2008). "Ideological Change and Israel's Disengagement from Gaza". Political Science Quarterly. 123 (1): 11–37. doi:10.1002/j.1538-165X.2008.tb00615.x. ISSN 0032-3195. JSTOR 20202970. Archived from the original on 17 October 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
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