Most people in the strip, once part of Palestine, are refugees or their descendants, expelled during the creation of Israel in 1948
The Gaza Strip, a narrow slice of land on the Mediterranean Sea, is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, inhabited by approximately 2.3m Palestinians.
Historically part of the geographical region of Palestine, it was a vital coastal location for centuries, linking Asia with Europe, and has been controlled by the Ottoman and then the British empires and, more recently, been under Egyptian and Israeli military occupations.
