A Palestinian girl and her mother stand outside what used to be their Gaza house. (Reuters)

GAZA CITY — One year after Israeli occupation forces began Gaza Strip pullout, Palestinians in the impoverished coastal strip bitterly complain that the occupation, in one form or the other, lingers on.

"It is now clear, one year after the departure of Israeli forces, that the occupation is continuing, Israel still exercises total control over all aspects of inhabitants' lives," journalist and political analyst Hani Habib told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday, August 13.

"We had the withdrawal, but we don't have freedom," he added desperately.

At midnight on August 15, 2005, Israel began withdrawing 8,000 Jewish settlers and thousands of troops from the impoverished after 38 years of occupation.

Ambitions dreams to turn the impoverished strip into a beachside paradise have been dashed.

No sooner had the Palestinians started to breathe freely than Israel carried out more assassinations through sporadic air strikes.

The situation has been worsened by economic sanctions imposed on the Palestinian government in the wake of Hamas's sweeping election victory in January.

"The economic situation is dark," said lawyer and rights activist Younes Al-Jaru.

"Palestinian workers can't travel to Israel, government employees aren't paid, while the Gaza Strip's economic potential is very weak, without natural resources or industry."

The World Bank has warned that EU and US aid cuts would adversely impact at least 30 percent of the Palestinian population which is dependent on government salaries.

Unemployment stands at around 45 percent and the World Bank has estimated that two-thirds of the Gaza Strip population (1.4 million) lives under the poverty line, earning less than two dollars a day.

Each square kilometer (0.4 square mile) in Gaza Strip shelters an average of 2,350 Palestinians, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Giant Prison

Palestinians feel impression in Gaza Strip.

"Today the Gaza Strip is like a giant prison where it is impossible to leave or enter without Israeli authorization," said Jaru.

Israeli military checkpoints regularly hamper freedom of movement of people and goods inside the Palestinian territory.

More and more, Israel maintains control of the strip's territorial waters and airspace, and continues to inspect goods and monitor civilians entering from Egypt.

"Israel portrayed this withdrawal as the Palestinians recovering their freedom and independence, but since the first day, the Gaza Strip has remained under occupation," said Jaru.

"Many Palestinians hoped Gaza would become the embryo for an independent Palestinian state, but this hope has disappeared because of Palestinian leaders' inability to build (a state) and continued Israeli offensives," said Habib.

Since June 28, the Gaza Strip has been living and dying under the bombs, shells and missiles of an Israeli offensive that has killed 172 Palestinians, mostly civilians, launched after resistance fighters took prisoner one Israeli soldier.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned on Wednesday, August 9, that the ongoing Lebanon war had distracted international attention from the "unjustifiable" Palestinian killings in the relentless Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

A report by the Palestinian Monitoring Group said that July was the deadliest in the Gaza Strip for nearly two years, the highest since October 2004.

A UN report said on Monday, August 7, that Gaza residents were facing some of the worst humanitarian conditions in years.

The report said that more than 70 percent of the Gazans were now reliant on emergency assistance to meet daily food needs, while prices of essential goods, such as flour and sugar, had risen by between 15 and 33 percent.