On October 7th, Israel faced a horrifying attack by Hamas, leaving many people devastated. Thousands of lives are now lost, with hundreds of hostages as of this moment. The Hamas attack was unprecedented. According to NPR, a senior Hamas official told them that their planning was kept a closed secret. Since Hamas formed over three decades ago, the armed and hard lined Islamist group has been a major presence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
Hamas Background Information:
The struggle between Arabs and Jews ownership of the Holy Land dates back more than a century and has given rise to seven major wars. During Palestinian’s first uprising in 1987, an Islamic Resistance Movement formed, Hamas. Hamas’s goal was to create a Palestinian state. This rejected any peace deal with Israel. It’s roots are in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is supported by a robust sociopolitical structure inside the Palestinian territories. Hamas has a military wing known as the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades that has conducted many anti-Israel attacks in both Israel and the Palestinian territories since the 1990s. These attacks have included large-scale bombings against Israeli civilian targets, small-arms attacks, improvised roadside explosives, and rocket attacks. It is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and a number of other Western countries. “Hamas has only one agenda, to destroy Israel and to murder Jews,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Thursday at a press conference in Israel.
Gaza Bombing:
In a bombing of a hospital in Gaza City, 500 people had their lives taken away from them. Israel Defense Forces are further investigating the situation. Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said there were still no details on the hospital deaths, adding”We will get the details and update the public. I don’t know whether it was an Israeli air strike.”
The Gaza Strip is a small enclave bounded by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea where two million Palestinians live in crowded and impoverished conditions, most of them refugees.
The Roots of the Conflictions:
In the 1930’s Jewish Immigration from Europe to what we used to call Mandatory Palestine greatly increased. The Nazis started persecuting Jewish people. Arabs and Jews lived in the Holy Land and were ruled by the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I; the UK, one of the war’s victors, then took over control. A revolt was led after a rising nationalism among the Arabs. In an effort to stop Arab-Jewish violence, a British commission in 1937 recommended partitioning Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish. The United Nations embraced a different partition plan in 1947. The Arabs rejected both plans, leading to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 and the first Arab-Israeli war. That period produced more than half a million Arab refugees.
Palestines:
A large majority of Palestinians are Sunni Muslims, while a minority are Christians. In a 1967 war, Israel captured the Gaza Strip, as well as other territories from Egyptian control and the West Bank from Jordanian control. Many of the Arab refugees from the 1948 war fled to Gaza. Their descendants are counted as refugees today because no permanent solution for them has been found.
Currently:
The Jewish people have been terrorized by Hamas since the group’s founding over 35 years ago, and for the Palestinians, have also been terrorized, oppressed, and victimized by Hamas for the last 17 years that the group has been governing Gaza. Conflicts are still ongoing between Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas and Israel. Hamas called the operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” and said that it was a response to what it described as Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the ongoing siege of Gaza.
