The Gaza Strip or simply Gaza, is a narrow piece of land on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by Israel to the east and north, and Egypt to the southwest. With a population of 2 million, on some 365 square kilometers, Gaza, if considered a top-level political unit, ranks as the third most densely populated in the world. It is one of the two Palestinian territories, together with the West Bank. Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under the rule of the political and militant Islamist group Hamas, governing it as an oppressive, de facto one-party state.
The Gaza Strip initially emerged as an Egyptian-occupied territory after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Following the 1967 Six-Day War the territory came under Israeli military occupation until 2005. In the 1990s, as part of the Oslo Accords, the administration over most of the area was handed over to the Palestinian National Authority, alongside the existence of Israeli settlements in some areas, which were evacuated in 2005. Following Israel’s disengagement, in 2006, Hamas won the last-held Palestinian legislative election, and started administering Gaza, and took full control after a brief civil war the following year.[12] Hamas has since brutally cracked down and executed opponents…..
Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group descending from people who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia.
Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world’s Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, now encompassing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (the Palestinian territories) as well as Israel. In this combined area, as of 2022, Palestinians constitute a demographic majority, with an estimated population of 7.503 million or 51.16% (as compared to Jews at 46-47%) of all inhabitants, taking in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and almost 21 percent of the population of Israel proper as part of its Arab citizens. Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, around 750,000 in the West Bank, and around 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora, more than half are stateless, lacking legal citizenship in any country. Between 2.1 and 3.24 million of the diaspora population live as refugees in neighboring Jordan; over 1 million live between Syria and Lebanon, and about 750,000 live in Saudi Arabia, with Chile holding the largest Palestinian diaspora concentration (around half a million) outside of the Arab world….
Hamas officially the Islamic Resistance Movement is a Sunni Islamist political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian territories.[55] While it is headquartered in Gaza City, it also has a presence in the West Bank (the larger of the two Palestinian territories), in which its secular rival Fatah exercises control. Hamas is widely considered to be the “dominant political force” within the Palestinian territories….
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While historically seeking an Islamic Palestinian state over the combined territory of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, rejecting the two-state solution, Hamas began to accept negotiations with Israel and the 1967 borders in the agreements it signed with Fatah in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Many scholars reported that Hamas’ 2017 charter, at least in principle, accepted a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Under the ideological principles of Islamism, it promotes Palestinian nationalism in an Islamic context; it has pursued a policy of jihad (armed struggle) against Israel…