Gaza Strip . It is a narrow strip of land located in the Middle East, southwest of Israel and northeast of the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt , and which together with the West Bank forms the so-called Palestinian Territories. It has 11 km of border with Egypt, in the City of Rafah , and 51 km of border with Israel; it also has 40 km of coastline on the Mediterranean .
Summary
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- 1 History
- 2 Administrative plan
- 3 Economic indices
- 4 See also
- 5 Sources
History
The Gaza Strip, defined as such after the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947 , constitutes a territory in the southern portion of the eastern Mediterranean coast, with an arid geography but attractive coastal and rural landscapes and a Palestinian population, in frank growth.
Its area, in the shape of a narrow rectangle, has an area of 365 square kilometers, with a length from north to south of 45 kilometers and a width from east to west that ranges between 6 and 12 kilometers.
To the west it is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea , to the north and east by Israel and to the south by the Arab Republic of Egypt.The topography of the Gaza Strip is generally flat, with undulations ranging from 20 to 40 meters above the level from sea. Some sites of the eastern geography reach the height of 85 meters. A point to the east of the Beit Hanun village, in the north of the Strip, rises to 70 meters.
In 1967, the population of the Strip amounted to 380,800 inhabitants, of which 49.1% were children and adolescents under 15 years of age and 2.6% were over 65 years of age. In mid-2005, the population grew a million 390 thousand inhabitants, of them 704 thousand males and 686 thousand females. Of the total inhabitants, 63.7% correspond to the urban population, 5.1% to the rural population and 31.2% to the camp population.
Administrative plan
The Gaza Strip is made up of five provinces: Northern, Gaza, Deir Al-Balah, Khan Younes and Rafah.
281,727 people live in the Northern Province and the Jabalia Camp, built in 1948, is located there.
The Gaza Province, considered the largest in the Strip, has a population of about 487,000 Palestinians and is home to Camp Al-Chaté (The Coast), located west of Gaza City and built in 1949 . The Deir Al-Balah Province is located in the center of the Strip and its population amounts to 213 thousand 57 inhabitants.
Four camps are distributed around it: Deir Al-Balah, Nusseirat, Breij and Maghazi, all built in 1949 , with the exception of Nusseirat built in 1948. In the south of the Strip are the Khan Younes and Rafah provinces. In each of these provinces there is a camp that bears the same name, built in 1949 .
According to statistics for the middle of the current year, the population of Khan Younes province amounts to 285,613 inhabitants and that of Rafah province to 175,554.
Economic indices
The active labor force in the Gaza Strip in the first quarter of 2005 reached 36.6% of the basic labor force, and women represent 8.6%.
Unemployment affected 34%. Weekly working hours (excluding those who work in Israel) totaled 40.5 hours, while the average working days per month was 23.7, with an average daily wage of 55.8 shekel (US $ = 4.4 Shekel) .
In the Gaza Strip, poverty levels remained above West Bank levels. This rate reached in 2004 , with respect to expenses and income, 37.2% and 65%, respectively. The average monthly expenditure per household was 498.2 Jordanian dinars (US $ = 0.71 DJ), of which 184.1 DJ were used in food, while the average expenditure per individual was 67.8 DJ, of which 25.1 DJ in power.
The impact of all the measures applied by Israel on the economy of Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip, negatively affected 57.7% of those households, whose current income is less than half of what they earned before the Intifada .
During the first quarter of 2005 , 54.4% of the families in the Strip were forced to drastically reduce their spending on basic needs during the preceding twelve months.
According to demographic studies carried out in 2003 , the percentage of families in need of housing in the next decade will be 91.1%, while the percentage of families that will not be able to build their corresponding housing in the same period of time reached 70 ,fifteen.
