THE ESCALATION OF conflict in Israel and Gaza took almost everyone by surprise.
On Saturday morning, Hamas – an Islamist group that controls the blockaded Palestinian enclave – launched thousands of rockets into Israel as militants stormed nearby towns in what were the first incursions into its territory since Israeli independence in 1948.
Hundreds of civilians were killed or taken hostage, including many who were attending a music festival in the desert, and the events are already being dubbed Israel’s 9/11.
Fighting is ongoing, with over 1,000 now dead, many more injured and 120,000 people in Gaza displaced. Israel plans to lay siege to Gaza, pledging to reduce it to ‘rubble’ amid fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.
But although the situation is unprecedented in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the conditions that led to this uptick in fighting have been decades in the making, intensified by domestic flare-ups and political failures.
Palestinians have endured decades of hardship and have not achieved statehood despite numerous pledges and efforts at peace talks, though Saturday’s attacks were committed by an extremist group that does not represent all of its people.
As anyone who is remotely familiar with Middle Eastern politics will know, the conflict is one of the most intractable in the world, with both sides locked in an ongoing stalemate.
Thirty years ago, the world hoped that the signing of the Oslo Accords would prove a pivotal milestone in ending the conflict by paving the way for a two-state solution, with separate nations for Jews in Israel and Arabs in Palestine.
But the accords never materialised into anything tangible for the Palestinian side, while Israel continued to expand into territory earmarked for a Palestinian state without any rebuke from the West.
Millions of Palestinian refugees who were expelled from Israel during the first decades of the conflict – and their descendants – live abroad, many of them in refugee camps in the likes of nearby Jordan and Lebanon.
Israel refuses to entertain their so-called ‘right of return’ to properties and land which they were forcibly removed from during Israel’s war of independence in the late 1940s.
Nor will Israel acknowledge its role in causing the refugee problem, or compensate those who were forced to flee in the last number of decades.
Instead, it continues to occupy Palestinian territory and encourages Israeli settlers to go live there, in contravention of international law and amid criticism from the United Nations.
“Illegal settlement poses a corrosive threat to Israeli society as a whole, and unless Israeli forces abandon this dominant settler mindset and rightfully treat Palestinians in the occupied territory as protected persons, Israel’s deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023,” a group of UN experts said last year.
“No peaceful settlement [to the conflict] can be pursued under Israel’s repressive occupation: a reality that should be a wake-up call for all decision-makers.”
Palestinians who remain in the region have since been confined to two, non-contiguous enclaves in their former territory: the West Bank, which is occupied by Israel to its north-east; and the Gaza Strip, currently ruled by Hamas to the south-west.
More than 200 settlements have been constructed in the occupied West Bank since 1967, covering more than 10% of its territory. More than 100 of these have legal status under Israeli law.
The takeover of land by settlers not only deprives Palestinians of property rights and freedom of movement, but also impacts their ability to live and sustain their livelihoods by denying them access to water needed for things like livestock, irrigation and domestic consumption.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have not been held since 2014, and the overall question of Palestinian nationhood and self-determination remains unresolved.
A series of agreements that would see the formation of a new state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel have not yet come to pass, and the issue has slipped down the agenda in Europe while the United States continues to enable Israel’s occupation.
The problem has also been exacerbated by the election of a far-right government in Israel, led by its longest-tenured prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Under Netanyahu’s 15 years of leadership, the peace process has stagnated and Israel has encroached further into the West Bank, particularly in areas with better land and access to resources and in part through policies which forcibly displace Palestinians living there.
Netanyahu has pledged that there will be no Palestinian state while he is leader of Israel.
Without referencing Palestine, he has already signaled his intention to use the current conflict to “change the Middle East”.
“This is only the beginning… we are all with you and we will defeat them with force, enormous force,” he said today.
Emboldened by similar rhetoric from other Israeli ministers, violence against Palestinians has surged since last year: in 2022, a record number of Palestinians were killed at the hands of Israelis – a figure that looks set to be surpassed in 2023.
Earlier this year, there were pogroms in the northern West Bank town of Huwara, where Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians. Attempts by Palestinians to fight back were met with reprisal attacks by hundreds of Jewish settlers targeting locals and their property.
In Jenin refugee camp, home to more than 10,000 Palestinians who have been displaced in the West Bank, Israel conducted a series of raids earlier this year, breaking down houses and causing thousands of people to flee.
One of the biggest such raids in early July killed 13 Palestinians, including militants and children.
Meanwhile, recent tensions have centred on a sacred site in occupied East Jerusalem, known as the the Al-Aqsa Mosque to Muslim and as the Temple Mount to Jewish people.
In the past week, Israeli settlers entered the compound at the site, with the army enforcing restrictions on Palestinians from entering and the closure of shops to allow Jewish prayers to take place.
Such instances are seen as humiliating for Palestinians, who feel goaded and disrespected by Israel.
In August, the far-right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir typified the attitude of the government in remarks which backed settlers’ rights in the West Bank.
“My right, and that of my wife and children, to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria [Israel's term for the West Bank], is more important than the freedom of movement of Arabs,” he said.
Amidst all of this has been a push by the Biden administration in the US to normalise relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a move which would follow the Abraham Accord agreements brokered by the Trump administration.
While some see it as helping to stabilise the region, the normalisation of relations between Israel and other Arab countries is seen by Palestinians as a betrayal, particularly as acceptance allows Israel to continue mistreating Palestine without rebuke.
Complicating the matter is the stance of Iran, a regional rival of Saudi Arabia and an enemy of both Israel and the United States.
The country’s president Ebrahim Raisi has denounced any attempts by regional countries to normalise relations with its Israel as “reactionary and regressive”.
At last month’s UN General Assembly, he also said any “relationships between regional countries and the Zionist regime would be a stab in the back of the Palestinians”.
Although Hamas cited recent events after Saturday’s attack - it’s no coincidence that the operation was dubbed Al-Aqsa Storm after the mosque in east Jerusalem – it is not fully known why the group chose to attack when it did.
It also seems unlikely that such a huge operation would simply be a response to recent events, given the need to stockpile rockets and speculation about the choice of date – exactly 50 years since the Yom Kippur war between Israel and other Arab countries.
What is known is that the attack followed years of stagnation in the conflict, during which Palestinians suffered daily without any hope of a solution, and that Hamas claims it wanted to send a message, citing the West Bank occupation and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The leader of the group’s military wing, Muhammad Deif, said in a recorded statement that the group launched its operation so that “the enemy will understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended”.
The situation for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – the area ruled by Hamas – is particularly bleak.
The impoverished enclave has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007, and is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, with more than two million people living in a 362-square-kilometre area – which is even smaller than Co Louth.
Around half of its population is under 18, and there are harsh restrictions on movement of goods and people into and out of the region, with virtually no industry and a chronic lack of water, fuel and electricity.
Israel imposed an air, land and sea blockade in 2006 when an Israeli soldier, was captured by Hamas - an Islamist group funded by Iran which Israel, the United States and the EU classify as a terrorist group.
Over the years Hamas has launched numerous rocket attacks on Israel, which is protected by sophisticated missile defence systems, prompting airstrikes on Gaza in retaliation leading to the deaths of Palestinian civilians.
Tensions have flared to such an extent that Israel has fought four wars in Gaza Strip since its 2005 withdrawal: in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021.
These wars have killed more than 4,000 people on the Palestinian side, many of them civilians, compared to around 100 Israelis.
Israel also carries out occasional pre-emptive strikes in Gaza, targeting Hamas militants in a way that aims to curtail the group’s activities without getting into a full-scale war – a phenomenon known as ‘mowing the grass’ by Israel and in the US.
Despite all of this, efforts to resolve the conflict have fallen down the international agenda in recent years, particularly with such a focus now on the situation in Ukraine.
When Micheál Martin visited Israel and Palestine last month, he told reporters that he had hoped to re-kindle support at a European level for the two-state solution.
But Europe is not the most influential power when it comes to the conflict.
Over the decades, Israel’s greatest ally has been the United States, and it is the greatest cumulative recipient of US military aid. It received $3 billion from the US last year alone.
President Joe Biden reaffirmed his stance at the weekend, saying that the US stood by in support whatever response Israel had to the actions of Hamas.
“Israel has a right to defend itself and its people,” he said. “My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.”
And although there has been low-level friction between Biden and Netanyahu during the former’s term in office over Israeli expansion into the West Bank, the US president has nevertheless continued the policy of ignoring the Palestinian cause.
He has been in the background pushing for the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia – a move which analysists believe would hurt the Palestinians – and there have been no attempts by his administration to get peace talks back on the agenda.
Recent remarks appear to show a complacency about the situation.
“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” Biden’s national security adviser said last week.
Leaving aside the situation in Gaza, there is already speculation that this could be incredibly wide of the mark, with both Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah praising the Hamas attack.
Hezbollah launched guided missiles and artillery shells from Israel’s north on Sunday “in solidarity” with Hamas, in what some observers considered a warning shot.
At the moment, it remains unclear how the next few days will play out, though it is likely that the situation in Gaza will deteriorate and that there will be more deaths.
Given recent history, it should come as no surprise if things escalate even further.
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