 | The Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany has one for this country Travel warning released (Web link). We urgently warn against traveling to the Gaza Strip. Date of the last travel warning: 02.10.2013. |
 View over Gaza | |
| Gaza, Gasa | |
| province | |
|---|---|
| Gaza Strip has no parent region. | |
| Residents | 450.000 |
other value for residents on Wikidata: 515556   | |
| no tourist info on Wikidata: | |
Gaza (Arabic غزة, Hebrew עזה, sometimes also Gasa) is a city in the north Gaza Strip in the Palestinian territories.
background
Gaza City is the largest city on the Palestinian coastline and at the same time gives its name to this part of Palestine. The city looks back on a long history as a port city on this part of the eastern Mediterranean coast back.
Today Gaza City is best known for its unsatisfactory political situation. The entire coastal strip was under British mandate administration until 1948, when it was from Egypt occupied before he was in the 1967 Six Day War of Israel was conquered. In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and completely dissolved the Israeli settlements that existed at the time. However, Israel still controls the external borders (including sea borders), and the humanitarian situation in the region and in the city itself is considered precarious. Politically, the situation has developed unfavorably in recent years, among other things, because in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, a political group that is considered to be radical Islamic and which denies Israel its right to exist, has come to power. Continuous rocket fire from Gaza led to a large-scale military operation by the Israelis at the end of 2008, which also claimed many civilian casualties on the Palestinian side and led to considerable destruction in Gaza and the surrounding area. The rocket attacks have subsided since then, but it is happening in the border areas near the Israeli border like the northern one Negev and in the Israeli coastal plain still to the occasional rocket impact.
Although the area has apparently been somewhat more accessible again since mid-2010 and the situation has calmed down since the beginning of 2009, the borders are largely closed and official travel to Gaza is currently underway expressly discouraged. (Status: 08/2010)
getting there
By plane
At the southern end of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians received one in the time of Yasser Arafat Airport. In the wake of the sharp clashes between Israelis and Palestinians during the Al-Aqsa Intifada the airport was closed and the runway made unusable. The airport Yasser Arafat International Airport is therefore closed until further notice.
By train
The former railway line from Tel Aviv or. Lod above Ashkelon to Gaza and on to the Sinai has been out of service for many decades and can no longer be used in many areas.
By bus
In the street
Road connections exist in peacetime to the north towards Ashkelon and south to Egypt. Within the Gaza Strip there are some major roads from Gaza City in the northeast to the cities in the southwest (e.g. Chan Junis and Rafah)
By boat
Due to the Egyptian-Israeli sea blockade, Gaza cannot be reached by ship.
