On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants from Gaza launched thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and breached the heavily fortified border fence of Israel, calling the operation "Al-Aqsa Storm". According to Israeli authorities, this killed more than 1,400 people, and Hamas took 199 hostages. Responding to these attacks, Israel declared war and launched “Operation Swords of Iron”, saying that these strikes targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. 

Between October 7 and 12, Israel bombarded the densely inhabited territory of Gaza with 6,000 bombs. In addition, Israel ordered a "complete siege", shutting off supply lines of basic necessities such as electricity, fuel, food, and water to the Gaza population. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on October 17 that with more than a week of bombardment from Israel, at least 3,000 people were killed, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza.

Attacking sensitive facilities like hospitals is a war crime. On October 17, 2023, Tuesday, sheltering thousands of displaced people, Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza was bombed. Palestinian officials say hundreds were killed by this hospital bombing and claimed that it was caused by Israeli airstrikes. Countering this, the Israel Defense Forces said that they were not in any way involved in the hospital attack and blamed a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group — a rival Islamist militant group in Gaza.

While Israel and Gaza officials blame each other for this hospital bombing, the call for safe passage and crossing of borders continues. Vital humanitarian aid is unable to be transported in Gaza as this crisis is ongoing. Israel closed its two crossings with Gaza, and the only way aid can pass through connecting the south of the enclave to Egypt is the Rafah Crossing. Now, the crossing is closed because this side of the border in Palestine is being hit with Israeli airstrikes, but it is said to be opened to transport limited aid supplies.

The long history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine started long before the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I. The British government in 1917 declared the Balfour Declaration mandating Palestine as the “national home for the Jewish people”.

On November 29, 1947, Resolution 181 was passed by the UN General Assembly (UNGA), declaring the Partition plan, which divided Palestine a Jewish and Arab states. On May 14, 1948, the Israel state declared its independence, which led to the first Arab-Israeli war. In 1949, the war ended with Israel’s territory expanded, which led to the displacement of more than half of the Palestinian Arab population. The territory has been divided into three (the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip). 

The second Arab-Israeli war sparked on October 29, 1956, which was most known as the Suez War during the Cold War. The tension rose when the Israelis started a joint attack with the French and British forces against Egypt. 

Following is the third Arab-Israeli war called the June War or Naksah. It was the Six-Day War that took place in Gaza on June 5-10, 1967. Israel attacked Egypt and Syria’s air forces, which led to the complete control of Israel in the territories of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. 

On October 6, 1973, six years later, the fourth Arab-Israeli war, called the Yom Kippur War or Ramadan War sparked in Yom Kippur, Israel. Hoping to regain the territory lost to Israel, Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack during the Jewish holy day and Ramadan.

Finally, on September 17, 1978, an agreement between Israel and Egypt was signed. The following year, in 1979, the Camp David Accords was signed, a peace treaty that ended the thirty-year conflict between the two countries. 

The Camp David Accords strengthened ties between Israel and its neighbors, but its relations with Palestine remain in conflict. During the first intifada in 1987, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip rebelled against the Israeli government.

In January 1993, the Oslo I Accord, an agreement in Oslo by a representative of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was formed as a foundation of Palestine’s self-governance. On September 25, 1995, the Oslo II Accord was signed, an Israeli-Palestine Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A second intifada was introduced by the Palestinian Forces in 2000 and lasted until 2005. As a result, the control of the West Bank and Gaza was seized by the Palestinian people.

In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Hamas won the Palestinian Authority, causing functionalism among the Palestinians to flare up, which deposed long-time majority party Fatah. With this, Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip, and violence broke out between Hamas and Fatah. A series of failed peace talks and deadly confrontations finally led to an agreement to reconcile violence broke out between Hamas and Fatah, and in 2014, Fatah entered into a unity government with Hamas.

In May 2018, conflict arose again between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces. During the twenty-four-hour flare-up, militants in Gaza fired over one hundred rockets into Israel, and as a response, Israel strikes on more than fifty targets in Gaza.

In August and September 2020,  the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain agreed to normalize relations with Israel, which made them the third and fourth countries in the region with Egypt and Jordan. The Abraham Accords came more than eighteen months after the future of peace in the Middle East was tackled by ministerial talks in Warsaw, Poland, by Israel and several Arab states hosted by the United States.

In October 2020, an Israeli court ruled the eviction of several Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, which is a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, by May 2021. In February 2021, numerous Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah appealed to the court ruling, prompting protests around the hearings of the appeal, the fight around the ownership of the property, and the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem.

In late April 2021, to protest the pending evictions, Palestinians began to demonstrate in the streets of Jerusalem while Sheikh Jarrah residents and other activists hosted nightly sit-ins. In early May, the court ruled favoring the evictions, which caused the expansion of the protests and the deployment of force against demonstrators by the Israeli police. 

On May 21, 2021, brokered by Egypt, and with both sides claiming victory, Israel and Hamas ceased fire. Over this eleven-day battle, around 13 Israelis and around 250 Palestinians died, and around 2,000 others were wounded. Gazan authorities estimated that the damage cost tens of millions of dollars, and the United Nations estimates that 72,000 Palestinians were displaced due to the conflict.