Gaza

:This article is about the Middle Eastern city. For the province in Mozambique, see Gaza Province.

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The city of Gaza is the principal city in the Gaza Strip. It is sometimes called Gaza City to distinguish it from the Gaza Strip. It has a population of about 400,000. It is currently under the control of the Palestinian Authority, which took it over from Israel following the 1993 Oslo Accords.

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In Arabic it is written غَزَّة , in the Hebrew alphabet it is עַזָּה, and in Standard Hebrew it is ʻAzza.

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The word's original meaning is unclear. Some authorities derive it from Hebrew ʻAzzāh "strong"; however, the ʻ in ʻAzzāh is original (from proto-Semitic *ʻzz), whereas the ʻ in ʻAzza derives from original Ġ. The oldest attested records naming Gaza are ancient Egyptian, in which it is variously transcribed as q-ḏ-t or g-ḏ-t, in an attempt to render the Canaanite sounds ġ and z not found in the Egyptian of that period. The Tell el-Amarna tablets call it Qazatihttp://www.dabar.org/Sayce/RecordsOfThePast/Vol2/Tablets-tellelamarna-t.html. 5th-century BC Babylonian records call it Ḫazatu. In ancient Greek, it was termed Γάζα. In Hebrew, its pronunciation shifted from *Ġazzāh to Tiberian Hebrew ʻAzzāh around the first century AD, when the uvular fricatives were lost under the influence of other Semitic languages such as Aramaic. The Arabic form Ġazzah may derive from the Greek name. The earliest surviving written attestation of the name "Gaza" in Arabic may be the Nessana bilingual entagion of 674 AD (54 AH), although the name is mentioned in pre-Islamic traditions.

Mozambique: :"Mozambique" is also the name given to a style of music from the 1960s, an advanced rumba by Pello El AfroK?n....

Gaza Province: Gaza is a province of Mozambique. It has an area of 75,709 km2 and a population of approximately 1.3 million (2002)....

Gaza Strip: The Gaza Strip is a narrow strip of land in the Middle East not currently recognized internationally as a de jure part of any sovereign country. It takes its name from Gaza, its main city. It is one of the most densely populated territories on earth, with about 1.4 million in an area of 360 km?. ...

Gaza related Images and Photos (experimental)

Death in Gaza (DVD)

A Palestinian Man at a Soccer Stadium in Gaza City October 23 2006

St. Philip the Deacon on the Road Between Jerusalem and Gaza