Israel’s military “buffer zone” along the eastern and northern edge of the Gaza Strip eats up 30% of the territory’s arable land, the United Nations said this week.A quick calculation shows that 300 meters along a border 6 miles wide and 25 miles long is roughly 10 square kilometers. Gaza itself is 360 square kilometers. This means that Israel's buffer zone takes up less than 3% of Gaza land.
Fieldworkers with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) told the Christian Science Monitor that they have been unable to verify conditions in this 300-meter-wide band of land along the Green Line.
If that is 30% of Gaza's arable land, that means that Gaza has really very little arable land to begin with - some 33 square kilometers, less than 10% of the area. Satellite pictures of Gaza look like at least half of Gaza is "green," however.
This statistic seems unreliable, to say the least.