Explainer: Gaza's 70 years of woe

Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lay on ancient trading and maritime routes along the Mediterranean shore.Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by two million Palestinians.1948 - Refugees and Egyptian military ruleAs British colonial rule came to an end in Palestine in the late 1940s, violence intensified between Jews and Arabs, culminating in war between the newly crea