Israel-Hamas Conflicts (2008 to Present)

After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas took over, the first major conflict between Israel and Hamas took place at the end of 2008 and continued, most notably in 2012, 2014, and 2021. Among the factors complicating those hostilities were the high population density of the Gaza Strip and the fact that Hamas often hides from Israeli air attacks and evades military checkpoints by using a vast network of intricate subterranean tunnels hundreds of miles long and often constructed under urban dwellings, including hospitals (more here). These conflicts often came at a high human cost for Gaza’s civilians (more here). They usually lasted only weeks, resulted in few Israeli civilian casualties, and weakened Hamas’s military capacity. Hostilities often resulted in cease-fire agreements that temporarily eased Israel’s blockade and facilitated the transfer of foreign aid into the Gaza Strip. Many officials in Israel’s defense establishment maintained that Hamas had been effectively deterred by years of conflict and that an occasional flare-up of violence would be manageable. On October 7 the error of that assumption became tragically clear. 

2022 Israel’s Domestic Instability & Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations

At the close of 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office as Israel’s prime minister after cobbling together the most far-right cabinet since Israel’s independence. The cabinet pushed for reforms to Israel’s basic laws that would bring the judiciary under legislative oversight; the polarizing move led to unprecedented strikes and protests by many Israelis, including thousands of army reservists, concerned over the separation of powers. 

While tensions were brewing at home, Saudi Arabia began negotiating with Israel and the United States on an Israeli-Saudi peace deal. Although Saudi Arabia sought concessions on issues related to the Palestinians, the Palestinians were not directly involved in the discussions and the deal was not expected to satisfy the grievances of the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many observers believed that disrupting those negotiations was one of the goals of Hamas’s October 7 attack. This deal was part of a broader regional transformation. The United States, which had long been the driving force behind the peace process, sought a “pivot to Asia” in its foreign policy and hoped an Israeli-Saudi deal would reduce the resources it needed to devote to the Middle East. 

Iran, meanwhile, was consolidating an “axis of resistance” in the region that included Hezbollah in Lebanon, Pres. Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Houthi rebels in Yemen. Hamas, whose relationship with Iran had been tumultuous in the 2010s, had grown closer to Iran after 2017 and received significant Iranian support to build up its military capacity and capability. 

October 7th, 2023

On October 7, 2023, Hamas led a pre-mediated highly coordinated attack, which took place on Shemini Atzeret, a Jewish holiday that closes the autumn thanksgiving festival of Sukkot. Many IDF soldiers were on leave, and the IDF’s attention had been focused on Israel’s northern border rather than on the Gaza Strip in the south. The assault began about 6:30 AM with a barrage of at least 2,200 rockets launched into Israel in just 20 minutes, and the barrage reportedly overwhelmed the Iron Dome system, the highly successful antimissile defense system deployed throughout Israel. As the rockets rained down on Israel, at least 1,500 militants from Hamas and the PIJ infiltrated Israel at dozens of points by using explosives and bulldozers to breach the border, which was heavily fortified with smart technology, fencing, and concrete. They disabled communication networks for several of the Israeli military posts nearby, allowing them to attack those installations and enter civilian neighborhoods undetected. Militants simultaneously breached the maritime border by motorboat near the coastal town of Zikim. Others crossed into Israel on motorized paragliders. About 1,200 people were killed in the assault, which included families attacked in their homes in kibbutzim and attendees of an outdoor music festival. That number largely comprised Israeli civilians but also included foreign nationals. Adding to the trauma was the fact that it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

In the first hours, more than 240 Israelis were taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages of Hamas. At 8:23 AM on October 7th, the IDF announced a state of alert for war and began mobilizing its army reserves (eventually calling up more than 350,000 reservists over the next several days). Two hours later, IDF fighter jets began conducting air strikes in the Gaza Strip. On October 8 Israel declared itself in a state of war, and Netanyahu told residents of the blockaded enclave to “get out now. We will be everywhere and with all our might.” On October 9 Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, cutting off water, electricity, food, and fuel from entering the territory. Just three weeks after Hamas’s assault on October 7, more than 1.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had become internally displaced, and, with the number of Palestinians killed still climbing by the thousands, it had become the deadliest conflict for the Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. At the end of October, Israeli ground forces advanced into the Gaza Strip. Communications in the territory were initially cut, restricting the ability of militants to coordinate but also limiting the ability of paramedics and humanitarian organizations to attend to emergencies. As Israel conducted air strikes, international efforts were made to secure the release of the hostages. Qatar, which in years past had coordinated with Israel on the delivery of international aid packages to the Gaza Strip, became the key mediator, but in the first weeks of the war, it managed to negotiate the release of only four of the people held by Hamas.  On November 22 Israel’s security cabinet agreed to a prisoner exchange with Hamas, which was mediated by Qatar and Egypt, that would coincide with a temporary pause in fighting. During the pause, which lasted seven days, 110 of the hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. In the days after fighting resumed, Israeli forces moved into Khan Younis, the largest urban center in the south of the Gaza Strip and the location of the homes of senior Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif. Although the fighting was by and large centered on the Gaza Strip, it was not confined to that territory. The IDF also intensified its raids in the West Bank, blockading several urban areas, and in October it conducted a strike by warplane in the territory for the first time since the second intifada (2000–05). Attacks on Palestinians by vigilante Israeli settlers increased. Skirmishes with Hezbollah near the Lebanese border threatened to open a second major front, although both the IDF and Hezbollah appeared hesitant to escalate the fighting. Attempts by Houthi forces to strike southern Israel—an unusual target for the Yemen-based movement—using both missiles and drones also indicated some level of coordination among the Iran-led “axis of resistance” during the war.

Global Response to the War

The October 7 Hamas attack drew widespread condemnation from around the world and was denounced for its terrorism against civilians by many, including the governments of many Western countries as well as those of India, Japan, and South Korea. Some foreign ministries, especially those of several Arab countries as well as Turkey, Russia, and China, refrained from condemning Hamas specifically and instead urged restraint. U.S. Pres. Joe Biden pledged unequivocal support for Israel, and on October 18 he became the first U.S. president to visit Israel while it was at war.

By year’s end, international pressure weighed heavily on Israel amid the high number of civilian casualties and wide destruction in the Gaza Strip. In mid-December U.S. Pres. Joe Biden, during a fundraising event for his re-election campaign, said that Israel was beginning to lose international support. In early January 2024, after nearly 23,000 Palestinians had been reported dead (a number that included mostly civilians but also Hamas fighters), Israel announced a change in strategy that would result in a more targeted approach. By the end of January, the number of average daily deaths was one-third of what it was in October, but still more than three times that of the 2014 conflict, the deadliest in the Gaza Strip until 2023. However as the war led to a deepening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Israel faced significant international pressure to allow limited aid into the territory. Congress reported that "more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry there[,... and] about 90% of Gaza’s some 2.1 million residents have been displaced, with most facing unsanitary, overcrowded conditions alongside acute shortages of food, water, medical care, and other essential supplies and services." Some opponents of the war lodged accusations of genocide against Israel as the war moved to the southern half of the Gaza Strip, and in December 2023 South Africa sought an injunction from the International Court of Justice (the judicial organ of the United Nations) to prevent violations of international genocide conventions.

In late January a framework emerged through the mediation of Qatar, Egypt, and the United States for a potential three-phase pause in fighting during which a comprehensive agreement to end the war was discussed. The pause included the release, in stages, of hostages held in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian prisoners taken by Israel since the start of the conflict. Although Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire in November of 2023 to allow the exchange of more than 100 hostages for nearly 250 Palestinian prisoners, the fighting resumed one week later.

While continuing most U.S. support, the Administration increased criticism of Israel during the first half of 2024, citing questions about how military operations may or may not advance the Israeli government’s stated objectives and the conflict’s impact on Palestinian civilians. When in May 2024, Israel rejected a ceasefire agreement offered by Hamas and began a military offensive in Rafah, a southern city in Gaza, the U.S. warned Israel not to launch a full offensive, citing concerns of civilian casualties. Israel scaled back its invasion considerably. the court ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide, including enabling humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip. However, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) does not have an enforcement mechanism, and Israel insisted its operations did not “risk the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population.” Throughout the late spring, as the offensive continued, the U.S. chose to pause one shipment of 2,000 bombs to Israel.

In July 2024, Israel began launching attacks on a humanitarian safe zone city, al-Mawasi. Though the Israeli Defense Force had previously encouraged civilians to evacuate other areas and move toward al-Mawasi prior to the attack, the Israeli military said its aircraft had “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area" in the nearby town of Khan Younis.

Concerns have been raised over the potential of the war expanding into a greater regional conflict. In August, Israel assassinated the top leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Iran's capital city, Tehran. Meanwhile, after the initial conflict unfolded on October 7th, 2023, Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, launched rockets into Israel from Lebanon, claiming "solidarity" with the Palestinian people and forcing Israel to fight against Hamas and Hezbollah simultaneously. In late September, dozens of handheld devices exploded in the hands of Hezbollah leaders in Syria and Lebanon. Weeks later, Israel launched airstrikes in Lebanon, killing the secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as other top officials. Last week, Israel began a full ground invasion of Lebanon. Israeli strikes across Lebanon have killed more than 1,000 people in less than two weeks and forced many to flee their homes.

The intense emotions surrounding the war also led to a wave of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. In the first several weeks of the conflict, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 312 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, up from 64 incidents reported in the same period in 2022. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recorded 774 complaints of Islamophobia in the United States during a similar period, up from 63 total reported incidents in August.