The Gaza Strip is a 360 square kilometer strip of land (an area about twice the size of Washington, DC) bordered by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. Located just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza has a population of about 1.3 million Palestinians as well as about 5,000 Israeli settlers. Nearly one million of the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are refugees.
At the end of the 1948 War of Independence, the Strip was occupied Egyptian forces, until it was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.
In February 2005, the government in Israel approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, which calls for evacuating all settlements in the Gaza Strip.
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