Palestinian Territories: Fragmented and Walled in

Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City early on May 12 - AFP
Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City early on May 12 - AFP
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Palestinian Territories: Fragmented and Walled in

Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City early on May 12 - AFP
Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City early on May 12 - AFP

With fears growing of a "full-scale war" between Israel and the Palestinians, here is a look at the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The two territories plus Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem were long touted as basis of a Palestinian state in a "two-state" solution to the long-running conflict.

But that goal has become ever more distant, with the West Bank fragmented by Jewish settlements and several states recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided" capital.

Here is some background:

- Occupation -

In 1947 the United Nations voted to partition British-ruled Palestine into two states -- one Arab and one Jewish.

It made Jerusalem, sacred to the three Abrahamic religions and claimed by both sides as their capital, an international zone.

Almost immediately, fighting broke out that would eventually see more than half the Palestinian population -- 760,000 people -- fleeing or being expelled from what was to become Israel.

As the British mandate ended in 1948, Israel declared statehood.

The next day its Arab neighbors declared war. The conflict ended with Israel controlling 78 percent of mandate Palestine.

In the so-called Six-Day War of 1967, Israel occupied both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

It also occupied and later annexed east Jerusalem, which contains many of the sites holiest to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

- West Bank -

By far the larger of the two Palestinian territories, the West Bank covers 5,655 square kilometres (2,180 square miles) and is sandwiched between Israel and Jordan.

It has been occupied by the Israeli army for the past five decades.

The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, has limited powers over just 40 percent of the territory, mainly urban centers.

Israel, which controls all the entry points, administers 60 percent of the territory including its Jewish settlements, as well as its vital water resources.

Israel has also erected a security barrier partly following its armistice line with the West Bank but also cutting deep into the territory.

About 400,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, alongside 2.7 million Palestinians.

- East Jerusalem -

The sparks for the current crisis were clashes at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound and a years-long bid by Jewish settlers to take over homes Palestinians say are theirs.

The status of Jerusalem is possibly the most sensitive issue of the whole conflict.

After capturing it in 1967, Israel annexed east Jerusalem, including the Old City, in a move never recognized by the international community.

Israel views the whole city as its capital: a stance backed by former US president Donald Trump, who moved Washington's embassy there.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their own future state.

The Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site, includes the golden Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site.

This lies directly above the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews are allowed to pray, a short walk from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.

More than 200,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem, alongside around 300,000 Palestinians.

- Gaza Strip -

This strip of territory bordering Israel sits on the Mediterranean Sea, and also shares a border with Egypt.

It is one of the world's most densely populated areas, with some two million people squeezed into a strip just 41 kilometres (25 miles) long and at one point less than six kilometres across.

After occupying Gaza for 38 years, Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, but soon afterwards imposed a stifling land, air and sea blockade.

Islamist movement Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006, seized the territory from the Palestinian Authority the following year.

Israel, which like most western governments considers Hamas a terrorist organization, has carried out three full-scale military offensives against Gaza since 2008.

Around half of the population is out of work, two thirds of them young people, according to the World Bank. More than two thirds of the population depends on humanitarian aid.

Half of Gaza's residents live below the internationally recognized poverty line.



Rising Seas and Shifting Sands Attack Ancient Alexandria from Below 

A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
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Rising Seas and Shifting Sands Attack Ancient Alexandria from Below 

A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)

From her ninth-floor balcony over Alexandria's seafront, Eman Mabrouk looked down at the strip of sand that used to be the wide beach where she played as a child.

"The picture is completely different now," she said. The sea has crept closer, the concrete barriers have got longer and the buildings around her have cracked and shifted.

Every year 40 of them collapse across Egypt's second city, up from one on average a decade ago, a study shows.

The storied settlement that survived everything from bombardment by the British in the 1880s to attacks by crusaders in the 1160s is succumbing to a subtler foe infiltrating its foundations.

The warming waters of the Mediterranean are rising, part of a global phenomenon driven by climate change. In Alexandria, that is leading to coastal erosion and sending saltwater seeping through the sandy substrate, undermining buildings from below, researchers say.

"This is why we see the buildings in Alexandria being eroded from the bottom up," said Essam Heggy, a water scientist at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the study published in February describing a growing crisis in Alexandria and along the whole coast.

The combination of continuous seawater rises, ground subsidence and coastal erosion means Alexandria’s coastline has receded on average 3.5 meters a year over the last 20 years, he told Reuters.

"For many people who see that climatic change is something that will happen in the future and we don’t need to worry about it, it’s actually happening right now, right here," Heggy said.

The situation is alarming enough when set out in the report - "Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts" in the journal "Earth's Future". For Mabrouk, 50, it has been part of day-to-day life for years.

She had to leave her last apartment when the building started moving.

"It eventually got slanted. I mean, after two years, we were all ... leaning," she told Reuters. "If you put something on the table, you would feel like it was rolling."

BARRIERS, BULLDOZERS, CRACKS

Egypt's government has acknowledged the problem and promised action. Submerged breakwaters reduce coastal wave action and truckloads of sand replenish stripped beaches.

Nine concrete sea barriers have been set up "to protect the delta and Alexandria from the impact of rising sea waves," Alexandria's governor, Ahmed Khaled Hassan, said.

The barriers stretch out to sea, piles of striking geometric shapes, their clear curves and lines standing out against the crumbling, flaking apartment blocks on the land.

Authorities are trying to get in ahead of the collapses by demolishing buildings at risk.

Around 7,500 were marked for destruction and 55,000 new housing units will be built, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a crowd as he stood on one of the concrete barriers on July 14.

"There isn't a day that passes without a partial or complete collapse of at least one building that already had a demolition order," Madbouly said.

Some are hopeful the measures can make a difference.

"There are no dangers now ... They have made their calculations," coffee shop owner Shady Mostafa said as he watched builders working on one of the barriers.

Others are less sure. Alexandria's 70-km (45-mile) long coastal zone was marked down as the most vulnerable in the whole Mediterranean basin in the February report.

Around 2% of the city's housing stock – or about 7,000 buildings – were probably unsafe, it added.

Every day, more people are pouring into the city - Alexandria's population has nearly doubled to about 5.8 million in the last 25 years, swollen by workers and tourists, according to Egypt's statistics agency CAPMAS. Property prices keep going up, despite all the risks, trackers show.

Sea levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water, partly because the relative shallowness of its sea basin means it is warming up faster.

The causes may be global, but the impacts are local, said 26-year-old Alexandria resident Ahmed al-Ashry.

"There's a change in the buildings, there's a change in the streets," he told Reuters.

"Every now and then we try to renovate the buildings, and in less than a month, the renovations start to fall apart. Our neighbors have started saying the same thing, that cracks have started to appear."