Key facts about Gaza

• Gaza is an arid rectangle of territory at the southeast end of the Mediterranean, about 45km long and 10km wide. It is wedged between Israel to the north and east, and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to the south.
• Gaza has been continuously inhabited for more than 3,000 years. It was a crossroads of ancient civilisations and a strategic outpost on the Mediterranean.
• The Ottoman Empire ruled Gaza for hundreds of years until World War One when it came under British rule along with the rest of Palestine. It came under Egyptian control in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli war that led to Israel's creation.
• Gaza's population tripled in 1948-49 when it absorbed about a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fleeing areas now part of Israel.
• Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in the 1967 war and ended its military presence there in September 2005, having removed 8,500 Jewish colonists from 21 enclaves and demolished their homes after almost four decades of occupation.
• Israel resumed ground operations in June 2006 after militants from Gaza tunnelled across the border and seized an Israeli soldier, who is still being held.

Living in the territory

• About 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza, more than half of them refugees from past wars with Israel and their descendants.
• Most Gazans live on less than $2 a day. Unemployment stood at 35 per cent in 2006, according to the World Bank. Israeli security closures curbing cross-border trade and access to jobs and Western sanctions imposed after Hamas came to power in early 2006 have hit the Palestinian economy hard.