Demographics
In 2010 approximately 1.6 million Palestinians lived in the Gaza Strip, of whom almost 1.0 million are UN-registered refugees. The majority of the Palestinians are descendants (the Palestinians are the only refugee group to have ever been given hereditary refugee status) of refugees who were driven from or left their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Strip's population has continued to increase since that time, one of the main reasons being a total fertility rate of almost 5 children per woman. In a ranking by total fertility rate, this places Gaza 26th of 223 regions.
Most of the inhabitants are Sunni Muslims, with an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Christians, making the region 99.3 percent Sunni Muslim and 0.7 percent Christian. There is also a Shia Muslim population in the enclave.
Before the Hamas takeover, approximately 500 women from the former Soviet Union lived in Gaza. During the Soviet era, the Communist Party subsidized university studies for thousands of students from Yemen, Egypt, Syria and the territories. Some of them married during their studies and brought their Russian and Ukrainian spouses back home. When Hamas came to power, over half of them left the Strip via the Erez crossing to Amman and flew back to Eastern Europe.
Read more about this topic: Governance Of The Gaza Strip