The Israel- Hamas War, October 2023: Exploring the Background to the Latest Levantine Tragedy
The State of Israel was taken by surprise during the night of 6/7 October 2023-the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973-when terrorists from the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood, a multi-pronged attack on southern Israel by air, land, and sea. Israeli intelligence and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were wrong-footed as heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached the supposedly impregnable Israel-Gaza border fence at several points. By 10 October, it was reported that Hamas had killed as many as 900 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 250 young people attending a music festival at a kibbutz in the Negev Desert, and taken between 100 and 150 hostages, including women and children, presumably to be used as human shields. The death toll on the Palestinian side meanwhile reached 700. People on both sides continue to die, many more are being reported injured, while property is destroyed, people are rendered homeless, and innocent civilians on both sides of the divide face an uncertain future. This is by far the largest terrorist attack on Israeli soil and invited an immediate and overwhelming Israeli response. Retaliatory air strikes, artillery fire, and naval bombardment have targeted sites believed to harbour Hamas operatives and their supplies within the coastal enclave. Israel has also imposed a total blockade of the Gaza Strip-cutting off supplies of food, electricity, fuel, and water to its 2.3 million residents in a form of ‘collective punishment’ that raises humanitarian concerns -and 300,000 reservists have been called up by the IDF with the expectation of escalating military action.
This is the latest troublesome episode in the convoluted history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Early Zionist leaders and organisations, such as Theodor Herzl and Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), saw a planned return to the Promised Land of Eretz Yisrael as a means to overcome discrimination and to provide fresh opportunities for Jews facing growing anti-Semitism in Europe. The Balfour Declaration of November 1917 promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the imperative for which was to be later provided by the Holocaust. Meanwhile, organised Jewish immigration to the Ottoman province of Palestine had commenced with the First Aliyah (1882-1903), followed by further waves in 1904-1914, 1919-1923, 1924-1931, and 1932-1948. The first large-scale Palestinian uprising against Jewish immigration in 1929 was followed by mass protests and strikes through the 1930s, culminating in the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. Following the Second World War, the UN Partition Plan of 1947 proposed a two-state solution, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, which emulated Britain’s Peel Commission Report from 1937. This proposal has been revived in recent years, but was rejected by Palestinian Arabs and neighbouring Arab states at the time. Under the British Mandate of Palestine, in effect from 1922 to 1948, by which the UK oversaw Palestine on behalf of the League of Nations and then the United Nations, Jewish immigration was restricted so as to placate the local Arab population. This led to a surge in anti-British activity by Jewish paramilitary terrorist groups such as Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang between 1944 and 1948.
Just as the British Mandate was ending, the State of Israel was duly proclaimed by David Ben Gurion at 4 38 PM on 14 May 1948, amid Arab opposition, and officially came into being on the stroke of midnight. The date has since come to be known by the Palestinians as al- Nakba (“the catastrophe”). The following day, the first of several Arab-Israeli wars broke out (15 May 1948-10 March 1949), as five Arab armies invaded the newly founded nation. This provided a baptism of fire for the Haganah (Jewish army) and the opportunity for its Palmach commando units to display their prowess on the battlefield.
The first major dislocation of people, involving 750,000 Palestinian refugees between 1948 and 1949, ended up with about a third going to Jordanian-controlled West Bank of Jordan River, a third to Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip, and the remainder to refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The next major internal population shift followed the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel annexed East Jerusalem and captured the rest of historic Palestine, taking the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank of the Jordan River from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Ever since the formation of Israel, Jewish immigration gained in momentum and was boosted by the enactment of the Law of Return on 5 July 1950, which conferred an automatic right of return, subject to certain conditions. A growing Jewish population soon required adequate living space. A conflict over land and property rights led to friction between settlers and the already settled. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was accordingly formed in Cairo in 1964, and Yasser Arafat became chairman three years later. The 1970s witnessed an escalation of Palestinian terrorist activity, while the PLO gained in international stature and came to be recognised as the leading voice of the Palestinian Arabs. There were, however, many other voices competing for attention. Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) was thus founded by a Palestinian cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in December 1967, out of the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was a product of the First Palestinian Intifada, an uprising by Arabs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
While the PLO later engaged in constructive dialogue with Israel, other Islamic and Islamist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, took an uncompromising stance by refusing to accept the existence of Israel and demanding instead an Islamic state in Palestine. Matters were worsened by deteriorating relations between the State of Israel and Palestinians, related to poor living conditions in Palestinian refugee camps and an expansion of ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Palestinians are currently divided between the moderate Fatah (a part of PLO), which exerts partial civilian control in the West Bank through the Palestinian National Authority, and the extremist Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. The Gaza Strip is also home to other militant Palestinian factions, such as Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committee, and the Army of Islam.
Israel and Hamas are currently engaged in a deadly military conflict, in which Israel is determined to obliterate Hamas, which in turn aims to inflict as much damage on Israel as it possibly can. While de-escalation remains by far the best immediate option, neither party has shown any sign of compromise. Judging by the history books, this is by no means unusual. Once again, we will have to witness events play out from the sidelines, hoping that someone will eventually see sense, display leadership, and seek out alternative and far less disruptive modes of conflict resolution.
Ashis Banerjee