Palestine

STATE OF PALESTINE

The State of Palestine is a Middle Eastern country in the process of being established, the formation of which is envisaged by UN decisions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with its capital in East Jerusalem. The area of ​​the country is about 6 thousand square meters. km. The official language is Arabic. The state religion is Islam.
Palestine is a democratic parliamentary republic. The head of state is the president. The country has a government, parliament and police force. Some of the state structures are at the stage of formation.
The first people on the banks of the Jordan River lived as far back as 750 thousand years BC. The name of the country came from the name of the people – the Philistines, who settled on the Mediterranean coast from the 13th century BC. NS. Over the centuries, rulers have repeatedly changed here: Egyptians, Jews, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Crusaders. At the end of the First World War, the Middle East regions, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, were transformed into political units under external control. The proclamation of a modern independent Arab state in Palestine took place in 1988, since 1994 the autonomy has been led by the Palestinian National Authority; since 2013, only the name “State of Palestine” has been used for official purposes.

Population
The population of Palestine is about 4.5 million people. The main population of the country are Palestinian Arabs, and Jews also live here. Taking into account historical realities, in addition to the Arabic language, Hebrew and English are used by the population. More than 70% of Palestinians live in cities, more than a third of the population is young people under the age of 15. In recent decades, the fruits of the spiritual activities of compatriots have been in great demand – music, painting, films by local authors are popular.

Economy
In the structure of the state’s GDP, the leading sectors are the service sector (over 60%), industry and agriculture. The industry is dominated by small enterprises and workshops for the production of textiles, building materials, cement, soap, plastic products, furniture, and processing of agricultural products. Extraction of sand, gravel, nonmetallic minerals, natural gas is carried out. A specific feature of the local economy is the massive migration of labor to neighboring countries.
Up to 90% of industrial and about half of agricultural production in Palestine goes to local markets, the rest is exported. Among the exported goods are plastic products, natural stone, furniture, olive oil, ferrous scrap, building materials. The structure of imports is dominated by electricity, fuel and oil, machinery and equipment, electronic equipment, means of transport, pharmaceutical products, ferrous metals, plastics, and consumer goods.
Main foreign economic partners: Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China.

Transport
The length of the country’s highways is about 5 thousand km, almost all of them have a hard surface. The main mode of public transport is buses and taxis. There are no operating railways on the territories of the autonomy, but there is a developed plan for the construction of a high-speed highway with a length of about 500 km, including for connecting with the exclave. There is no international airport in Palestine; airports of neighboring states are often used for flights. The state’s only seaport serves as a naval police base and home for fishing boats.

Interesting
The country is located in a subtropical climate zone with Mediterranean hot summers and warm winters.
Palestinian cuisine is considered the most diverse – it has absorbed the traditions of almost all countries in the Middle East.
In Palestine, cryptocurrencies have gained wide popularity, since they can be paid via the Internet, without legal problems.
There is no national currency, the new Israeli shekel, Jordanian dinar, Egyptian pound, US dollar, euro are in use.
GMT: +3 hours (summer), +2 hours (winter).