Early in October, war broke out between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militarist group. An unprovoked attack by Hamas caused the start of the war. Now, things are worse than ever before. Over 1,500 people are dead, and the death toll can only get higher. Why do Israel and Hamas have such bad blood? How far do they go back? How many lives have been affected as a result of this? And what does their future, as well as America’s, look like?
Image source: Palestine Portal
The modern Israel-Palestine conflict first began at the end of the 19th century. In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, AKA the Partition Plan. Its goal was to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. The next year, the state of Israel was officially created, and it set off the first Arab-Israeli War. Israel came out victorious when the war ended in 1949, but the territory was split into 3 parts: Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. After that, tensions arose during the 1950s and 1960s. Then, in June 1967, Israel attacked Egyptian and Syrian forces, starting the Six-Day War, and tensions intensified until 1979. That year, a series of cease-fires and the signing of the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty, wrapped up the conflict between Israel and Egypt after 30 years.
The Oslo Accords, created in the 1990s, “also” helped keep the peace, but events in the 2000s took a turn for the worse. In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian Authority’s parliamentary elections. As a result, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip. Gaza is a small piece of land on the Mediterranean Sea that borders Egypt to the South and has been under the rule of the Palestinian Authority since 1993. It didn’t take long for violence to break out between Hamas and the Fatah political party. Through the 2010s, there were various peace talks that ended up failing.
Image source: Wikipedia
Eventually, in the summer of 2014, a series of clashes that occurred in the Palestinian territories precipitated a military confrontation between the military of Israel and Hamas that led to disastrous numbers of casualties. Hamas fired 3,000 rockets at Israel. In response, Israel launched a major offensive in Gaza. It ended in August of that year as a result of a cease-fire, but by then, 2,000 people had already been killed. Hamas has committed various terrorist and criminal acts toward Israel, which led to over 1,000 people being killed in the current war. As the years passed, things only got worse between them, as more fighting eventually broke out between Hamas and Israel. The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump tried for several years to find a solution. In January 2020, the “Peace to Prosperity ” plan was released, only for it to be rejected because of its support for Israel to annex West Bank settlements. By the start of the 2020s, there were several riots and demonstrations in the streets of Jerusalem.
Image source: Wall Street Journal
On October 7, 2023, Israel and Hamas officially declared war on each other. In response, U.S. President Joe Biden made a strong statement of support for Israel. On that same day, the U.S. promised to aid Israel through its shipments of weapons. Even various international groups would go on to express their various concerns toward the matter. During Days 1 and 2 of fighting, 800 Israelis and 500 Palestinians were killed. As of October 24th, the death toll for Israelis had risen to 1,400 people. During the first day, people were celebrating at the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering,” an open-air music festival, known for celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot Re’im, a village in Gaza. Hamas took an uncertain number of hostages and killed 260 people, all of them civilians. Today, it’s being described as the biggest terrorist attack in the history of the State of Israel.
It’s currently hard to say what the future will look like regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, it’s easy to say that it’s far from over. Within the next few years there may be further talks to maintain peace between them as there have been in the past.
Sources
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict- Source for Information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War- Image 2 Image 3
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-both-israel-and-palestinian-groups-may-have-committed-war-crimes-1434973611- Image 3 (Wall Street Journal)