According to BBC News, on 7 October, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and infiltrating communities near the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military claims that over 200 soldiers and civilians were taken to Gaza as hostages. Over 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in air and artillery strikes carried out by the Israeli military in response.
Israel was established in 1948 after Britain took control of Palestine following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War One. The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority, as well as other smaller ethnic groups. Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave the UK the task of establishing a "national home" in Palestine for Jewish people. This stemmed from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a pledge made by then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Britain's Jewish community.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, the number of Jews arriving in Palestine grew, with many fleeing persecution in Europe, especially the Nazi Holocaust in World War Two. Violence between Jews and Arabs and against British rule also increased. In 1947, the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city.
In 1948, Britain withdrew and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel, intended to be a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution and a national homeland for Jews. Fighting between Jewish and Arab militias intensified, and the day after Israel declared statehood, five Arab countries attacked.
By the time the fighting ended in a ceasefire the following year, Israel controlled most of the territory. In 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as most of the Syrian Golan Heights, Gaza, and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. Most Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in neighboring Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
The Gaza Strip, a narrow strip of land between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, is home to over two million inhabitants and is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. After the 1948-49 war, Gaza was occupied by Egypt for 19 years, followed by Israel in the 1967 war and stayed until 2005, building Jewish settlements. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers in 2005, but retained control over its airspace, shared border, and shoreline. The UN still considers the territory to be occupied by Israel.
The main problems between Israelis and Palestinians include the fate of Palestinian refugees, whether Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank should remain or be removed, whether the two sides should share Jerusalem, and whether a Palestinian state should be created alongside Israel. Peace talks were held between the 1990s and 2010s, but cracks soon appeared, with then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu calling Oslo a mortal threat to Israel. The Israelis accelerated their project to settle Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the recently emerged Palestinian militant group Hamas sent suicide bombers to kill people in Israel.
The atmosphere in Israel turned ugly, culminating in Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination by a Jewish extremist on 4 November 1995. In the 2000s, attempts were made to revive the peace process, including in 2003 when a roadmap was devised by world powers with the ultimate goal of a two-state solution, but this was never implemented. Peace efforts finally stalled in 2014, when talks failed between the Israelis and Palestinians in Washington.
Gaza is ruled by Hamas, an Islamist group committed to the destruction of Israel and designated as a terrorist group by the UK and many other countries. Hamas won the Palestinians' last elections in 2006 and seized control of Gaza the following year by ousting the rival Fatah movement of West Bank-based President Mahmoud Abbas. Since then, militants in Gaza have fought several wars with Israel, which along with Egypt has maintained a partial blockade on the strip to isolate Hamas and try to stop attacks.
The US, the European Union, and other Western countries have all condemned the Hamas attack on Israel. Russia and China have both refused to condemn Hamas and say they are maintaining contact with both sides in the conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed US policy for the absence of peace in the Middle East.
