What is the Gaza Strip? Who rules Gaza; How big is the Gaza Strip? Know about Gaza's painful history

The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, has come under intense Israeli bombardment recently, after Hamas terrorists' unprecedented land assault and hundreds of missiles into Israel from Gaza.

What is the Gaza Strip?

The Gaza Strip is a 25-mile-long by 6-mile-wide enclave surrounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the north and east by Israel, and on the south by Egypt.

One of the two Palestinian territories is Gaza. The Israeli-occupied West Bank is the other.

The Gaza Strip, surrounded by Israeli-built walls and gates, is one of the world's most densely inhabited areas.

Since Hamas took control of the peninsula in 2007, Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade, limiting the passage of people and commodities. Israel controls its airspace and coastline, as well as what commodities can enter Gaza.

According to UNRWA, the Palestinian aid organisation, Gaza is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, 1.7 million of whom are Palestinian refugees.

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According to the organisation Save the Children, children make up about half of Gaza's population.

Who rules Gaza?

Hamas is a violent Palestinian nationalist organisation founded by Ismail Haniyeh that has battled regularly with Palestinian officials in the West Bank who negotiated the Oslo Peace Accords. After winning elections in Gaza in 2006, it gained control of the territory. There have been no elections since then.

Despite requests from the UN and human rights organisations, Israel has maintained a land, air, and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007, wreaking havoc on Palestinian citizens. Israel claims that the embargo, which gives them control of Gaza's borders and is enforced by Egypt, is required to defend Israeli people from Hamas.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the blockade is unlawful and breaches the Geneva Convention, which Israeli officials dispute. The United Nations, several human rights organisations, and legal academics noting the embargo believe Gaza to be under Israeli military occupation. 

Gaza's painful history

Before establishing the state of Israel in 1948, Gaza was part of what was known as Palestine. As part of ancient Palestine, it passed to the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s, and following World War I, it was ruled by the United Kingdom until 1948. More than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were exiled from their homes in the aftermath of Israel's establishment in 1948, fighting alongside Arab troops in what Palestinians refer to as the "Nakba," or "Catastrophe."

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt conquered Gaza. It remained under Egyptian authority until 1967, when Israel invaded and occupied the region, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians consider these lands to be part of a future state.

Israel evacuated its troops and around 7,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005.

The Hamas organisation won the Gaza elections the next year. However, after a power struggle with the opposition Fatah party, Hamas seized control by force in 2007. Since then, there have been no elections in Gaza.

In response, Israel imposed an air, land, and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip. When Hamas assumed power in Egypt in 2007, it blocked its border crossing with Gaza.

In the previous decade and a half, Hamas has fought three conflicts with Israel. In May 2021, one of the last big conflicts killed hundreds dead in Gaza and 13 dead in Israel — and destroyed the Gaza Strip.