Head of the Gaza Strip. The Prime Minister of Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, recognised by the Palestinian Legislative Council though Europe and the US refuse to recognise his government. Gaza is left without an official voice with which to address the outside world. The country is considered as a prison in which one and a half million people are held. Haniyeh has spent most of his life in Gaza. He grew up in the al-Shati refugee camp in the heart of the Gaza City, where his parents arrived, the generation that was shattered by catastrophe of becoming refugees in 1948. It was there that he took his first steps into politics, in the 1980s, ultimately being imprisoned in 1989 for his participation in the anti-Israeli protests in the First Intifada.