Size: a narrow coastal strip, bound by Egypt and Israel, 40km (25 miles) long and 10km (6 miles) wide, giving it an area of 360 km² (140 square miles)
Land type: sandy plain, 13 per cent arable, prone to drought.
Population: 1,482,405 (July 2007, estimate).
Main towns: Gaza City, Rafah, Khan Younis
Names: Gaza Strip, Qita Ghazzah.

Early History
The first mention of the city of Gaza, a prosperous port on the Mediterranean coast, was in the 15th century BC. Over the following centuries, it was routinely besieged, sacked and taken over by the current dominant forces in the region. In the Torah and the Old Testament, it emerged as a stronghold of the Philistines — the root of the word, Palestine — and where Samson brought down the temple after he had been delivered into bondage by Delilah. During the Middle Ages, it failed to attain the importance of other great Middle Eastern cities and was ruled from the sixteenth century until the First World War by the Ottoman Empire.

From 1918

After the First World War, Gaza was incorporated in British-run Palestine. According to the 1947 partition plan, the surrounding area was to form part of a new Palestinian state, but when the first Arab-Israeli war broke out in 1948, it became Egypt's headquarters in the region and the scene of heavy fighting with the Israelis. The conflict isolated the strip of coastal territory from the larger West Bank which became packed with refugees fleeing the front lines. The ceasefire that ended the war in 1949 set the borders of the Gaza Strip largely as they remain today.

From 1949
For the next 18 years — with the brief exception of Israeli occupation during the Suez Crisis — the Gaza Strip was run by Egypt, with which it shares an 11km (6.8 mile) border and the Rafah border crossing. But in 1967, it fell to Israel during the Six Day War, which took control of its internal and external security and started to build Jewish settlements within its borders. The economy of the strip became more and more interlinked with Israel, with as much as 40 per cent of the adult population crossing the border each day to work there, but poverty festered in the refugee camps and violence sparked the first intifada in 1987. In 1993, self-rule was handed back to the Palestinians but from 2000 and the start of the second intifada, the border has been ever more tightly patrolled. In 2005, Israel unilaterally removed 5,000 Jewish settlers from the strip.

Population
More than 1.4 million people live in the 360 square kilometres of the Gaza Strip, making it one of the most crowded places on earth. In 1948, just 80,000 people lived in the same area. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 993,818 of the residents of the strip are refugees and 75 per cent of them live in eight camps, where the population density can reach over 75,000 people per square kilometre. Twenty-per cent of homes are not connected to the sewage system, making sanitation a major problem. The population is 99 per cent Palestinian and most are Sunni Muslims. The majority of the population is not originally from Gaza and also young: the median age of men in the Gaza Strip is 15.9, women 16.2.

Economy
According to 2003 estimates, GDP per head in the Gaza Strip was $1,500, the same as Chad and Mozambique and less than Rwanda. Conditions have worsened since then, with near-constant border closures making trade and employment in Israel, which used to provide a third of income in Gaza, nearly impossible. More than 60 per cent of Gazans live beneath the poverty line and many rely on food aid to survive. Construction, light industry, fishing and agriculture — mostly citrus fruit farms — provide what little employment there is. Very few women work outside cottage industries, such as textile making, and the home. It has no independent currency, and uses the Israeli shekel.

Times Recommends

• Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'
• 'Delayed justice' fear for OJ Simpson
• Sex and the sari