Facts about Gaza
Strategically located on the Mediterranean coastal route, ancient Gaza was a prosperous trade center and a stop on the caravan route between Egypt and Syria.
Gaza has been the site of pre-human and human occupation for more than two hundred thousand years.
The Gaza Strip has rudimentary landline telephone, extensive mobile telephone services, and four internet service providers.
The school system in Gaza is based upon Egypt's model, which is divided into three stages: Basic education, which includes a primary stage and a preparatory stage; secondary education and post-secondary education.
Canaan is an ancient term for a region approximating to present-day Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Lebanon and Syria.
Following withdrawal, Israel retained offshore maritime control and control of airspace over Gaza Strip.
The Egyptians never accepted the inhabitants as legal citizens of Egypt and thus prohibited them from leaving Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, chose Gaza as its first provincial headquarters.
Gaza has the potential for great prosperity, through hothouse agriculture, tourism with some of the finest beaches on the Mediterranean Sea, and local industry.
The Great Mosque (Al-Omari Mosque), located in downtown Gaza City, is a tourist attraction.
The regions allotted to the proposed Arab state included the Gaza Strip and almost all of the West Bank, as well as other areas.
At the beginning of the Israeli occupation, relations between Israelis and citizens of Gaza were pleasant.
The remains of the ancient Gaza synagogue, built around 500 C.E., were found near the city wharf.
Gaza was captured by Arabs in the 630s after a siege during which the Jewish population of the city defended it alongside the Byzantine garrison.
The Gaza Strip and its population is under the nominal jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority, a provisional government that also nominally governs parts of the West Bank.
The Gaza Strip has a 32-mile (51km) border with Israel, a seven-mile (11km) border with Egypt, and an area of 139 square miles (360kmІ), slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC.
The authority also operates the Gaza Strip's Rafah border crossing into Egypt under European Union supervision.
The Gaza Strip (Arabic:Qita' Ghazzah; Hebrew:Retzu'at 'Azza) is a narrow coastal strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean Sea, between Egypt and Israel, just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula.
Gaza was conquered by Jonathan Maccabaeus the Hasmonean (Brother of Judas Maccabeus the Maccabee).
Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun are located to the north and northeast of Gaza City, respectively.
The Gaza Strip has a temperate climate, with mild winters, and dry, hot summers subject to drought.
Prior to Israel's unilateral withdrawal, the United States considered the Gaza Strip to be Israeli-occupied territory.
The agreement also established an elected 88-member Palestinian Council, which held its inaugural session in Gaza in March 1996.
Economic development, not UN handouts, should provide employment, wealth and self-respect to the people of Gaza.
A popular and religious-based movement is needed to enable the people of Israel and Gaza to seek a world without the boundaries and barriers raised by faith and the identities of nation, race, or ethnicity.
Currently some Gaza people and groups believe in the pursuit of their "liberation" through the use of deadly violence, even perpetrated against innocents.
A somewhat divisive issue that has arisen since Hawaiian was adopted as an official state language is the exact spelling of the state's name.
The Al-Sayed Hashem Mosque, located in Al-Daraj Quarter, is one of the largest and most beautiful ancient mosques in Gaza.
The situation of the Gaza Strip, and of the entire Middle East, has proven intractable to political solution.
Indigenous Gazans comprise only 40 per cent of the area’s total population, though they hold disproportionate influence in economic and political affairs.
The travel constraints alone have left many Gazans without a functioning economic base because they have lost access to employment opportunities in Israel.
Thousands of Gaza's inhabitants live in refugee camps that have gradually become permanent settlements.
Most Gaza households have a radio and a TV, and roughly 20 percent have a personal computer.
The tomb of Hashem bin Abd-Manaf, Mohammad's grandfather who died in Gaza during a trading voyage, is believed to be under the dome of the mosque.
The key political challenge facing the government of Gaza is to build a genuine indigenous national unity that would transcend sectarian loyalties.
Their territory was later named Philistia, and Gaza became one of their chief cities.
Most Israeli forces left Gaza, leaving a new Palestinian National Authority to administer and police the city, along with the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Gaza, the largest city, has a population of approximately 400,000.
Napoleon's Fort (Qasr El-Basha), also located in downtown Gaza, is an imposing stone building dates back to the Mamluk period.
Following the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced into refugee camps, with most of the refugees from the southern part of Israel ending up in Gaza.
Regardless of how much one might sympathize with the plight of Gaza residents, or "Palestinian causes," such behavior must be condemned; it is also counterproductive to the cause of Palestinian self-determination.
When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, these greenhouses were bought by the World Bank and given to the Palestinian people to jump-start their economy.
Gaza Strip industries are generally small family businesses that produce textiles, soap, olive-wood carvings, and mother-of-pearl souvenirs; the Israelis have established some small-scale modern industries in an industrial center.