The Gaza strip is closed to the outside world and more than a million Palestinians are locked in.
Impenetrable barriers surround Gaza on three sides - and there is no way out by sea.
At dawn the border crossings to Israel used to heave with people - 25,000 Palestinian workers crossed daily. But since October, Israel has closed off all the borders and now almost no-one gets through. Gazans grows fruit for export to Israel - but now it is hard to transport it out, and most of it goes to waste. Some farmers have lost almost all their incomes. The cost of Israel's policy of closure is estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds.