Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been a nation engulfed in conflict. The protracted tensions between Israel and neighboring Palestine came to a head on Oct. 7, when the Hamas group, an Islamic militant group that governs the Palestinian territory of Gaza, began firing missiles at Israel. Israel responded swiftly with missiles of its own, and told the inhabitants of Gaza to evacuate, suggesting this conflict is far from over.
Knowing the history of Israel and Palestine is vital to understanding the current Israel-Hamas war.
The modern nation of Israel was born from conflict. According to World is One News, from 1517 to 1917, Israel and a large region of western Asia were ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman rule came to an end in 1918, when the once powerful empire found itself on the losing side of World War I. Subsequently, another empire came to control the region: Great Britain.
Before Great Britain was in control, Jewish Europeans driven out of their homelands by antisemitic policies began migrating to a region between Lebanon and Egypt known widely as Palestine. Tensions grew between the Jewish immigrants and the Arabs who already lived in this region. The beginning of British rule favored the Jewish population in this region. This favor was shown by Arthur James Balfour, Britain’s foreign secretary, who needed to secure support for the war effort. In his letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, a wealthy British Jew, Balfour detailed Britain’s plan to make Palestine a home for Jewish people. As more Jews immigrated to Palestine, ideas of resistance grew in the minds of many Palestinian Arabs.
Attacks on Jewish settlements began as Palestinian Arabs resisted British rule. Although a minority, Jews in Palestine were well organized. According to World is One News, their well-run medical systems allowed them to persist in Palestine. Conflicts came to a head in 1936 when Palestine saw increased attacks on its Jewish and British residents. This period of rebellion, continuing until 1939, was met with retaliation from British officials, often in the form of village-wide punishments. Despite these attacks, Jews continued to immigrate to Palestine.
Refugees escaping the Holocaust fled to the nation, and the Jewish population in Palestine continued to grow. As Palestinian Jews proved their commitment to a Jewish homeland, Great Britain grew weary of maintaining their colony, exiting the region in 1948. The fate of Palestine was now in the hands of the U.N.
In 1947, the U.N. passed a resolution calling for separate Jewish and Arab states in Palestine, and called for an end to Britain’s rule; the U.N. also claimed control over the historic city of Jerusalem. On May 14, 1948, the Jewish people declared independence for the new nation Israel despite outrage from Arab Palestinians, who were then forcefully displaced from the region. Many Palestinians across the globe view this event as the loss of their homeland, and have since named it Nakba, or “the catastrophe.” Israel did not have long to celebrate its independence before the neighboring nations of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon invaded. The resulting Arab-Israeli wars established a bond between Israel and the U.S.
Israel, backed by the U.S., was able to resist the surrounding countries. Following this initial conflict, Israel still controlled the land given to them in the U.N.’s 1947 decision. Multiple wars followed between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel gained control of two regions that had previously been given to the Palestinians: the West Bank and Gaza. The 1950 Tripartite Declaration sealed the U.S’s involvement in these wars.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Tripartite Declaration, announced on May 25, 1950, was an agreement between the nations of France, Great Britain and the U.S to maintain peace in the Middle East. This laid the framework for these western nations to foster negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, as well as control the flow of arms into these countries. Despite this step towards peace, conflicts persisted, most recently with the Hamas group.
Hamas is an acronym for ‘Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya,’ which translates to ‘Islamic Resistance Movement.’ According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Hamas was founded by a Palestinian cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In the late 1960s, Yassin began his career as an activist in the West Bank. He founded Hamas as an alternative to the violent Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PJI). Yassin believed that the PJI’s violent tactics threatened to draw support away from the Islamic Brotherhood, a large branch of the Muslim faith. In 1988, however, Hamas published a new charter asking for the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state in Palestine.
The Hamas’ desire for an Islamic society drove the organization to violence in 1993, when they first began using suicide bombers. Just months after these bombings, the Oslo Accords, a pair of agreements between Israel and Palestine created a new entity called the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority was created to have limited autonomy over some areas of Gaza and Palestine. These accords were condemned by Hamas. After years of violent resistance, the U.S. declared Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza. The Palestinian Authority held an election the following year and members of Hamas gained a slim majority in the legislature. The Hamas group quickly formed a government, establishing their own judiciary system, and took control of the press. The Palestinian Authority lost control over the region, leaving Gaza entirely under the control of Hamas, who are still committed to Israel’s destruction.
Hamas has consistently launched attacks on Israel since it took control of Gaza. Before the most recent attacks, conflicts spiked in 2021, when Hamas and the PJI fired over 4000 missiles into Israel. The recent Oct. 7 assault was the deadliest yet, with Gaza firing missiles as far north as Tel-Aviv and launching a ground invasion into southern Israel. A total of 1400 civilians in Israel have died due to these attacks, according to the Associated Press.
Israel officially declared war with Hamas on Oct. 8, according to CNN. Israel swiftly sent tanks and troops to the Gaza border by Israel, and launched missiles into Gaza. According to the New York Times, Gaza’s Health Ministry released a document on Oct. 26 stating that 7028 civilians in Gaza had been killed by Israeli attacks.
The conflict in Israel is anything but modern, with the current war being a hundred years in the making. It is vital that we understand the complex history that has led to this war before we can understand the perspectives of those involved in it.
