The Gaza Strip is part of Palestine, a term that refers to the entity which has governed the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1994. As of 2005 Palestine had not yet become an independent sovereign state, but it was widely seen as a state-in-the-making for the Palestinian people.

The Gaza Strip is an area of 360 square kilometers (139 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast between Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Israel. Mostly composed of sandy plains and low, rolling hills, with 1.3 million inhabitants, the region is one of the most densely populated in the world. The population is overwhelmingly Palestinian Arab and Muslim (98.7%). However, a Christian Palestinian minority of about 1 percent does exist. Approximately 75 percent of the residents of Gaza are refugees from Palestine. Until 2005 there was also a post-1967 Jewish population of settlers which numbered about 7,000.

The Gaza Strip economy is primarily based...