This is a global news podcast, special edition from the BBC World Service.

I'm Jackie Leonard and in this edition, recorded at 1730 GMT on Friday, the 13th of October,

we'll be answering your questions about the Israeli Gaza crisis. A week on from the Hamas

attack on Israel, we've teamed up with the new BBC podcast, The Conflict, and are joined from

Israel by its host, our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, who is in Ash Dodd,

north of Gaza, also with us is our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, who's in Jerusalem.

We'll be hearing too, from the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner.

We had planned to talk to our colleagues in Gaza, but our apologies for now, it's just too dangerous.

Let's cross to Israel. We have a great deal to discuss about the events in the Middle East,

how we got here, how events are unfolding on the ground, how the international community is

responding and how any sort of peaceful outcome might be achieved. It's clear from your questions

that you'd like us to start with a little bit of geography and a bit of history, so Lise,

welcome, a relatively easy one to kick off with. Can you give us a sense of the size and location

of Gaza, where it is in relation to Israel, who lives there, who's in charge and who its neighbours are?

Well, the Gaza Strip is a coastal strip of land on the Mediterranean. The southern side is

connecting to Egypt and then its other neighbour is Israel. It is described as one of the most

densely populated places on earth. Some 2.3 million Palestinians live there and they live with

great frustration because they feel they don't really have control over their lives, even though

Israel pulled out its troops in 2005. It controls the airspace, it controls the sea, it also controls

all of the land crossings into Gaza except the one which goes to Egypt, which is called the

Ruffa Crossing. We've tried to use various measures to say how big it is for people who live in

North America. It's about the size of Washington DC. Okay, so that was the geography part,

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