This is the Gaza Strip, the key Palestinian territory in the war between Israel and Hamas
Israel has launched a large-scale offensive against Hamas following the Islamist group's attack this weekend. It is the first episode of a new war in the Middle East that has already left more than 1,100 dead and a hundred hostages.. The Israeli response, which has declared a state of war, has been numerous bombings of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.
This geopolitical enclave, an area of land measuring 360 square kilometers and where more than two million people live, is key to understanding the dynamics between Israel and Palestine and the role of Hamas in a conflict that has its roots in the history of the region. .
A geopolitical enclave controlled by Hamas
Located off the Mediterranean coast, the Gaza Strip shares a border with Israel and Egypt. It is a very densely populated territory (more than 5,000 inhabitants per square kilometer), flat, without high elevations, with an arid climate and sensitive to droughts, with crops and the Habesor River, in addition to natural gas, being the main source of resources. of its inhabitants. Its main city and capital is Gaza, the most populated city in the Palestinian territories, with more than 600,000 inhabitants.
The Gaza Strip is one of the two territories under the Government of the Palestinian National Authority, along with the West Bank, according to the 1993 Oslo agreements.. However, since 2007, the area has remained under the de facto control of Hamas, a Palestinian paramilitary organization that defends armed struggle as a strategy to achieve recognition of the sovereign and independent State of Palestine, whose capital would be in East Jerusalem.
Gaza is one of the two Palestinian territories
Gaza has been the subject of territorial disputes throughout history. Territory of several historical empires such as the Egyptian, Assyrian and Roman, it belonged to the Ottoman Empire before passing into British hands in the 20th century.. During the first half of the 20th century, the British Mandate of Palestine governed the enclave, at which time there was an arrival of Jewish immigration from Europe to the region, which caused tensions between the Arab community settled there and the new Jewish community.
With the end of World War II, the United Nations resolved to create a Jewish state in territory formerly occupied by the British: a partition plan that divided Palestinian territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state.. Gaza came under Egyptian control after the war between the newly formed Israeli state and its Arab neighbors, leading to an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The area has witnessed numerous conflicts, such as the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). In the first, Israel occupied the territories of the Gaza Strip, a territory it liberated in 2005 but maintained. a military blockade on the area, which in 2007 came under de facto control by the Islamist militia Hamas, unlike in the West Bank, where the Palestinian National Authority still maintains control through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a coalition led by the Fatah party and in favor of diplomatic relations with Israel instead of armed struggle, according to The World Order.
Israel attacks Hamas targets in the Strip
Israel is now focusing its retaliation for the Hamas attacks on Gaza, the territory controlled by the Palestinian militia, and where the escalation of war has already left 413 Palestinians dead from the bombings, while it is estimated that the fatalities from the Hamas attacks on Israel They already exceed more than 700. More than a thousand dead in just two days, to which is added the taking of Israeli hostages by Hamas in what is already the largest escalation of violence in the area since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.