ISRAEL and Hamas have been waging war since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with a military offensive in Gaza in which more than 40,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.
The conflict is the bloodiest in a protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that has rumbled on for seven decades and destabilized the Middle East.
Origins of the conflict
The conflict pits Israeli demands for a secure homeland in what it has long regarded as a hostile Middle East against Palestinians’ unrealized aspirations for a state of their own.
In 1947, while Palestine was under British mandate rule, the United Nations General Assembly agreed to a plan to partition it into Arab and Jewish states and for international rule over Jerusalem. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, which gave them 56% of the land. The Arab League rejected the proposal.
Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948, a day before the scheduled end of British rule, establishing a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution and seeking a national home on land to which they cite ties dating to antiquity.
In the late 1940s, violence had been intensifying between Arabs, who comprised about two-thirds of the population, and Jews. A day after Israel was created, troops from five Arab states attacked.
In the war that followed, some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes, ending up in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians lament this as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe. Israel contests the assertion that it forced out Palestinians.
Armistice agreements halted the fighting in 1949 but there was no formal peace. Descendants of Palestinians who stayed put in the war make up about 20% of Israel’s population now.
What wars have been fought since then?
In 1967, Israel made a pre-emptive strike on Egypt and Syria, launching the Six-Day War. Israel captured the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
A 1967 Israeli census put Gaza’s population at 394,000, at least 60% of them Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and Golan Heights, starting the Yom Kippur War. Israel pushed both armies back within three weeks.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and thousands of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas under Yasser Arafat were evacuated by sea after a 10-week siege. Israeli troops pulled out of Lebanon in 2000.
In 2005, Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized full control of Gaza in 2007. Fighting flared between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021.
In 2006, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in the border region and Israel launched military action, triggering a six-week war.
There have also been two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and 2000 to 2005. In the second, Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups carried out suicide bombings in Israel, and Israel conducted tank assaults and airstrikes on Palestinian cities.
Since then, there have been several rounds of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel and is regarded as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union, the United States and other countries. Hamas says its armed activities are resistance against Israeli occupation.