The Gaza Strip, or simply Gaza, is a self-governing Palestinian territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that borders Egypt on the southwest for eleven kilometers (six point eight miles) and Israel on the east and north along a fifty-one kilometer (thirty-two mile) border.

Gaza and the West Bank are claimed by the de jure sovereign State of Palestine.

The territories of Gaza and the West Bank are separated from each other by Israeli territory.

Both fall under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, but Gaza has since June 2007 been governed by Hamas, a Palestinian fundamentalist militant Islamic organization that had come to power in free elections in 2006.

It has been placed under an Israeli and U.S.-led international economic and political boycott from that time onward.

The territory is forty-one kilometers (twenty-five miles) long, and from six to twelve kilometers (three point seven to seven point five miles) wide, with a total area of three hundred and sixty-five square kilometers (one hundred and forty-one square miles).

With around one million eight hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians on some three hundred and sixty-two square kilometers, Gaza ranks as the thirrd most densely populated polity in the world.

An extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gaza's Palestinians.

Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 2.91% (2014 est.), the thirteenth highest in the world, and is often referred to as overcrowded.

The population is expected to increase to two million one hundred thousand in 2020.

Gaza may soon be rendered unliveable, if present trends continue.

Due to the Israeli and Egyptian border closures and the Israeli sea and air blockade, the population is not free to leave or enter the Gaza Strip, nor allowed to freely import or export goods.

Sunni Muslims make up the predominant part of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still occupied by Israel, supported by additional restrictions placed on Gaza by Egypt.

Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings.

It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory.

Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.

The system of control imposed by Israel is described as an "indirect occupation".

Some other legal scholars have disputed the idea that Israel still occupies Gaza. 

addition, the extent of self-rule exercised in the Gaza Strip has led some to describe the territory as a de facto independent state.

When Hamas wins a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, the opposing political party Fatah refuses to join the proposed coalition, until a short-lived unity government agreement is brokered by Saudi Arabia.

When this collapses under joint Israeli and United States pressure, the Palestinian Authority institutes a non-Hamas government in the West Bank while Hamas forms a government on its own in Gaza.

Further economic sanctions are imposed by Israel and the European Quartet against Hamas.

A brief civil war between the two Palestinian groups breaks out in Gaza when, apparently under a U.S.-backed plan, Fatah contests Hamas's administration.

Hamas emerges the victor and expels Fatah-allied officials and members of the PA's security apparatus from the Strip, and has remained the sole governing power in Gaza since that date.