On Saturday, an unprecedented surprise aerial and ground attack was launched by the Palestinian militant group Hamas against Israel, leading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare that the country is now at war. This marks one of the most serious escalations in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, a militant group with its origins dating back to the first Intifada.
Hamas claimed to have fired approximately 5,000 missiles on Saturday morning from the Gaza Strip, a territory that has been under the control of the militant group since 2007. Over the past 15 years, this region has witnessed four wars and several smaller clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Gaza Strip, a Palestinian exclave, shares borders with Israel, Egypt, and the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Despite being largely isolated, this 365 square kilometer area has been under an Israel-imposed blockade on land, sea, and air for the past 15 years.
According to a 2018 report by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated areas, with more than 5,000 people per square kilometer. It is divided into five governorates: North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah.
‘World’s largest open-air prison’
In 2007, Israel initiated a blockade on the Gaza Strip following the Hamas takeover. Israel argued that the blockade was necessary to prevent the smuggling of weapons and materials with potential military use by Hamas and other groups in Gaza. This blockade, characterized by 55 kilometers of eight-meter-high walls, has effectively isolated Gaza from both the global community and neighboring regions. It has severely restricted the movement of people in and out of Gaza, impacting their ability to travel for work, education, medical treatment, or to visit family members. Additionally, the blockade has hindered the flow of crucial items like fuel and medical supplies through Israel-controlled border checkpoints surrounding the strip.
Human rights organizations have described Gaza as “the world’s largest open-air prison,” citing the dire living conditions there as a violation of international humanitarian law. They refer to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment and obliges an occupying power to ensure the well-being of the occupied population.
Israel maintains that the Fourth Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to the West Bank and Gaza, but the United Nations Security Council asserts its applicability to the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
As a consequence of these restrictions and other challenges, a generation of Palestinians has grown up in impoverished circumstances, with soaring unemployment and poverty rates. According to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, unemployment surged from 23.6 percent before the blockade to 47 percent by the end of 2022. The poverty rate also increased from 40 percent in 2005 to 61.6 percent in 2022. Moreover, last month, Israeli military forces suspended the movement of commercial goods from Gaza to Israel.
According to the United Nations, less than 5 percent of Gaza’s water is safe for drinking. The region, with only one operational power plant, has grappled with persistent power shortages that have significantly affected vital services such as healthcare, water supply, sanitation, as well as industries and agriculture.
Media reports indicate that prior to Saturday’s attack, violence and escalating tensions in the West Bank had resulted in the deaths of 225 Palestinians and 32 Israelis this year.
History of Gaza Strip
Over the past century, the Gaza region has been a hotbed of contention involving various groups. After World War I, Britain assumed control of the area from the Ottoman Empire when it was predominantly inhabited by a Jewish minority and an Arab majority. During British rule, the region became part of the League of Nations mandate of Palestine in 1922.
Between 1922 and 1947, a significant influx of Jewish immigrants, escaping Nazi persecution in Germany and other parts of Europe, settled in the region. However, the Arab population, opposing the immigration and demanding independence, sparked a violent rebellion in 1937. Ultimately, in 1947, the United Nations terminated the mandate and proposed a resolution to partition the region into two independent states – one for Palestinian Arabs and the other for Jews. Jerusalem, a city of great religious significance to both communities, was to be placed under a special international regime.
The Jewish state declared itself as Israel and, along with neighboring Arab states, engaged in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, resulting in the expansion of its territory to encompass 77 percent of the previously recognized mandate of Palestine, including the majority of Jerusalem. Jordan and Egypt assumed control of the remaining territory designated for the Arab State, with Egypt taking control of the newly formed Gaza Strip. However, Israel later gained control of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the 1967 war, which resulted in a significant exodus of the Palestinian population to other regions.
In 1973, a major escalation occurred in the form of the Yom Kippur War, involving a coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, launching a two-front offensive against Israel from the north and south. After initially losing some territory, Israel swiftly regained it through a counter-offensive. The approximately 20-day-long war concluded with a cease-fire agreement brokered by the United States and the Soviet Union.
Between 1994 and 1999, Israel gradually transferred security and civilian responsibilities for much of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, a governing body established in 1994 as part of the Oslo Accords peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Palestinian Authority governed both Gaza and the West Bank until 2006 when Hamas assumed control following the last elections held in the region.
Conflict with Israel
In June 2008, following a period of ongoing strikes and incursions, Israel and Hamas reached an agreement to implement a six-month truce. However, this truce quickly became strained as both sides accused each other of violations, leading to an escalation in the final months of the agreement. When the truce officially ended on December 19, Hamas declared its intention not to extend it. Subsequently, broader hostilities erupted as Israel, in response to continued rocket attacks, launched a series of air strikes in the region, some of the most intense in years, aimed at targeting Hamas. After a week of air strikes, Israeli forces initiated a ground campaign into the Gaza Strip, prompting international calls for a cease-fire. More than three weeks of hostilities followed, resulting in a significant loss of life and the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Eventually, both Israel and Hamas separately declared a cease-fire.
Starting on November 14, 2012, Israel commenced a series of air strikes in Gaza in response to an uptick in rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli territory over the preceding nine months. The initial strike killed Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, the head of Hamas’s military wing. In retaliation, Hamas increased its rocket attacks on Israel, leading to ongoing fighting until both sides reached a cease-fire agreement on November 21.
In June 2014, the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers prompted a massive crackdown by Israel in the West Bank and increased air strikes in the Gaza Strip. This led to retaliatory rocket fire from Hamas, and on July 8, Israel launched a 50-day offensive into the Gaza Strip. The conflict resulted in the deaths of approximately 2,100 Palestinians and more than 70 Israelis, with numerous targets in the Gaza Strip being struck. Despite the devastation, Hamas’s handling of the conflict was seen positively by Palestinians and boosted the group’s popularity.
In the spring of 2018, a series of protests along the border with Israel, including attempts to breach the border and the use of flaming kites, were met with a violent response from Israel. The situation reached its peak on May 14 when around 40,000 Gazans participated in the protests, leading to Israeli troops opening fire, resulting in about 60 deaths and 2,700 injuries. This violence escalated into military strikes from Israel and rocket fire from Hamas, continuing for several months.
Amid sporadic clashes and Egyptian efforts to mediate a long-term truce, Israel and Hamas made some attempts to de-escalate tense situations. In October, Israel determined that rocket fire from Gaza was caused by a lightning strike. In November, a covert Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip was exposed, leading to hundreds of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel, which in turn resulted in over 100 Israeli air strikes. Nevertheless, the two sides quickly agreed to a truce, and throughout 2019 and into 2020, they engaged in negotiations for a long-term understanding to maintain peace and ease the blockade. These talks, while occasionally disrupted by brief outbreaks of violence, were reinforced by a halt in border protests and a relaxation of restrictions on trade and travel through the Gaza border.
A major escalation occurred in May 2021 when simmering tensions in Jerusalem boiled over. The Israeli Supreme Court was set to rule on the eviction of Palestinian residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, leading to confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators. In response, Hamas launched rockets into Jerusalem and parts of southern Israel, prompting Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
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