The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been ongoing for almost eighty years, according to the global conflict tracker. This has been due to the division between the Arabs and the Jews as well as fights over territory. Religious beliefs have also played a significant role in shaping the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. In the past twenty years, conflict sparked due to Palestine’s affliction about Israel’s control over Palestinian territories, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Various UN officials have reaffirmed that Israel’s permanent occupation of Palestinian territory has no legal validity. The recent escalation in October 2023 was triggered by a series of events, including tensions at religious sites in Jerusalem and clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters.
According to The Global Conflict Tracker, in early May 2021, after a court ruled in favor of the eviction of several Palestinian families from East Jerusalem properties, protests erupted and were met with Israeli military force. After this, the Palestinian militant group, the Hamas, launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, an Islamist group that is committed to the destruction of Israel and is designated as a terrorist group by the UK and many other countries. Israel responded with airstrikes and after eleven days both sides agreed to a ceasefire. Palestinians in Gaza say Israel’s restrictions and its air strikes on heavily populated areas amount to collective punishment. The fighting killed more than 250 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, 2,000 were wounded and 72,000 Palestinians were left displaced, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
This was not the first time in recent years that Israel has released military assaults on Gaza, and it was not the last. According to Al Jazeera, an English news source based in the Middle East, in 2014 a fifty-day war in the Gaza Strip Israel’s military killed “more than 2,100 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians and close to 500 children.”
Before the conflict, 700,000 Israelis lived in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem territories, captured by Israel in 1967 according to AP news. Israel saw the Gaza and West Bank as settlements that they had ownership over, however, these locations are Palestinian territories. The United States representative has said that new Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal, effectively reversing a policy by the administration of former President Donald Trump. This did not stop Israel’s government though; according to OCHA in 2023, 895 structures were demolished in the West Bank for lacking Israeli-issued building permits, which are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain under Israel’s discriminatory planning and permit laws and policies. This displaced roughly 4,000 Palestinians inside of their own country, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This left thousands of Palestinians displaced and Israel made it clear that they were not going to stop.
It’s also important to note that the Israeli military is ranked fourth in the world, following only Russia, the United States, and China, according to a 2022 US News & World Report. Palestinian resistance groups have significantly fewer troops compared to the Israeli military, with an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 fighters. This made it hard for Palestine to stand up for their citizens.
In October of 2023, the Palestinian government, run by Hamas, launched a land, sea, and air assault on the Gaza Strip. Part of Hamas’s motives could involve revenge for what it saw as past Israeli attacks and the occupation of the West Bank. According to Brittanica, the attack on October 7 resulted in more than 1,200 deaths, primarily Israeli citizens, making it the deadliest day for Israel since its independence and the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Palestine also captured 250 Israeli hostages in hopes that they could exchange hostages for prisoners like they have done in years in the past. The problem with this is that the Hamas attack was much more violent than ever before and they had never taken this many hostages—the destruction and amount of hostages taken motivated Israel to strike back hard. Israel has been at war since October seventh.
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, according to The Global Conflict Tracker, more than 1.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had become internally displaced, and the number of Palestinians killed was still climbing by the thousands. It wasn’t until Nov 1 that the Gaza Strip saw borders open, and even then it was only a small strip bordering Egypt. The border was opened but with stringent conditions agreed to by Egypt, Hamas, and Israel, to allow a limited number of foreign nationals to evacuate the territory. As of now, negotiations have only led to the release of 1,100 individuals from Gaza through this border.
On December 1 Israel ordered a 24-hour evacuation order pushing the 1.1 million residents into an area one-third the size of the total territory. The UN warned that this would be “impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences.” Evacuees described the evacuation corridors as unsafe, and full of terror from Israeli soldiers and dead bodies along the road.
According to AP News, at least 30,035 Palestinians have since been killed and the Israeli embassy in the UK expressed they believe about 10,000 of the deaths were Hamas soldiers. There have also been 70,457 Palestinians injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. According to Britannica, as of March 5, there have been 1,420 Israeli casualties and over 136 UNRWA aid workers killed.
According to Britannica, countries Egypt and Jordan are now refusing entrance to millions of displaced Palestinians for fear that they will not be able to return because they know that they cannot accommodate millions of new residents in the long term. There are also fears of getting involved in the war because they don’t want Hamas militaries to enter their country and trigger a new war.
Israeli military forces are making advancements surrounding Gaza City in hopes of squeezing Hamas, says The Global Conflict Tracker. This has the remaining thousands of citizens that still are in Gaza City cut off from southern Gaza where the rest of the population is located. The 1.5 million displaced individuals in Gaza have nowhere to go and have been cut off from essential services. They are living in fear of their unsafe and dire living conditions.
The war has led to a deepening humanitarian crisis and countries trying to provide aid have been met with confrontation from the Israeli military. Just on February 29, a video was released of at least 104 Palestinians being killed and 760 others injured when Israeli forces shelled a crowd waiting for humanitarian aid south of Gaza City.
Israel is being accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice, in late January they demanded Israel take all measures within its power to prevent genocide and the incitement of genocide without calling for a ceasefire.
