Today, Israel maintains a security buffer between the Egyptian controlled Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.
Similar rallies were held across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and even in the Gaza Strip.
But the poll in the Gaza strip, where Hamas is strong, was put off.
Those talks were suspended after Israel's three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip that ended in mid-January.
Another awkward complication is that Israel suggests that the Palestinians annex land adjacent to the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan's plans to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip sometime in May after his trip to Washington have raised concerns.
The Israeli government has already decided on a unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.
As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon oversaw Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, he lost support of many Likud members.
And Germany has been surprisingly stalwart in standing by Israel in the ongoing fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip may hover around 30%, but many of the jobless are not lacking in education.
Correspondents said there had been speculation he would be forced aside by the militant movement's powerful leaders in the Gaza Strip.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama visited Sderot, which is frequently targeted by rocket attacks from the nearby Gaza Strip.
However, the UN, along with most of the Western world, does not deal directly with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Egypt's state news agency quoted a top security official who said the gunmen were "jihadists" who had infiltrated from the Gaza Strip.
U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague said Israel also shares responsibility in de-escalating the ongoing violence along the Gaza strip on Friday.
FORBES: Israel Needs To De-Escalate In Gaza, U.K.'s Hague Says
Following the Israeli sea-born raid, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to be opened.
Diet is something the UN believes might be affecting the health of some in the Gaza Strip, particularly pregnant women and children.
As the PA's fortunes in the West Bank have waned, those of Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, have waxed.
ECONOMIST: Palestinian unity: Rivals who may need each other | The
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has brokered an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on border crossings in and out of the Gaza Strip.
In recent years, it has often been hard to keep culinary traditions alive in the Gaza Strip because of food shortages and power cuts.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, met late Monday with Erdogan, who plans to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip at the end of May.
While there, Annan pressed for Israel to lift its blockade of Lebanon and to relax restrictions along the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip.
If the Palestinians refuse, he says, Israel should move towards unilateral withdrawal, first from the Gaza strip, then from much of the West Bank.
Natan Sharansky, Israel's minister for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs, resigned from Ariel Sharon's government in protest against plans to withdraw from the Gaza strip.
But he assured his Israeli television audience that he could solve his problems with Hamas, the rival Palestinian Islamist party that controls the Gaza Strip.
NPR's Eric Westervelt, who's recently returned from the Gaza Strip.
The style of food in the Gaza Strip owes much to its port, which was on the ancient spice route linking south Arabia and the Mediterranean.
The UN says it is suspending all its food distribution centres in the Gaza Strip after protesters angered by aid cutbacks stormed one of its compounds.
She became a close adviser to Mr Sharon and in 2005 helped to broker his controversial pull-out of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.
It is not clear who might replace Mr Meshaal, although Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of Hamas's government in the Gaza Strip, is a likely candidate.
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