gaza

Arabic

2009-02-07T19:29:00.001-08:00

Arabic (الْعَرَبيّة al-ʿarabiyyah (informally: عَرَبيْ ʿarabī)), in terms of the number of speakers, is the largest living member of the Semitic language family. In ISO 639-3, modern Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage with 27 sub-languages. These varieties are spoken throughout the Arab world, and Standard Arabic is widely studied and used throughout the Islamic world.

Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century.^[5] Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).

Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Greek, Persian and Sanskrit in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.

Story of Gaza

2009-02-07T18:20:00.001-08:00

The Gaza Strip (Arabic: قطاع غزة‎ transliteration: Qiṭāʿ Ġazza/Qita' Ghazzah, Hebrew: רצועת עזה‎ Retzu'at 'Azza) is a coastal strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Egypt on the south-west and Israel on the south and east. It is about 41 kilometers (25 mi) long, and between 6 and 12 kilometers (4–7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi). The area is not recognized internationally as part of any sovereign country but is claimed by the Palestinian National Authority as part of the Palestinian territories. Since the June 2007 battle of Gaza, actual control of the area is in the hands of the Hamas de facto government.

Egypt governed the Gaza Strip from 1948-67, and today rules the southern border between the Gaza strip and the Sinai desert, a border now famous for the breach in early 2008 and the smuggling of food through underground tunnels^[1]. Israel governed the Gaza Strip from 1967-2005. Pursuant to the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Israel maintains military control of the Gaza strip's airspace, non-Egyptian land borders and territorial waters.

The territory takes its name from Gaza, its main city. It has about 1.4 million Palestinian residents.^[2] Most are either refugees or descended from refugees of the Palestinian exodus.

Peta Gaza

2009-02-07T18:09:00.000-08:00