Consiliul CSC
Long before October 7, the conflict between Israel and Palestinians were on going but at another scale. Even after 2005 when Gaza disengaged from the enclave there were five Israeli wars. The Israeli authorities said that their policy (before October 7) was to “mow the lawn” – attempts to degrade Hamas’s military capabilities by indiscriminately bombing Gaza every few years.
One of the first major Israeli wars on Gaza was “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008, which started after Hamas rockets were fired at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. This battle was followed by an other in 2014, which was called “Protective Edge”. The last major war between Hamas and Israel took place in 2021.
The concerning pattern of all of these wars was the disproportionate number of the casualties from the two parties, as a considerable higher number of Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army.
The ongoing war started on October 7, when Hamas led an attack on southern Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 were taken captive. As a response, Israel has consistently bombarded Gaza and the conflict is far from an end.
Israel justifies his massive attacks as an objective to “dismantle Hamas” and not to erase a hole ethnicity form the region, despite scepticism from experts, allies, and members of Israel’s administration about its feasibility. Their discourse and approach is debatable considering the fact that in nine months, Israel has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians and uprooted nearly the entire population while reducing Gaza to rubble.
An other concern for the international actors is the mass starvation and a state of famine that affects the entire population of Gaza and is recognized by the UN. Some experts believe Israel is trying to “depopulate” Gaza by making it unfit for life and the actions of Israel and the violence is considered, by the human rights experts, as genocide. In this note, the International Criminal Court issued multiple arrest warrants for some Israeli leaders for overseeing war crimes in Gaza including “extermination”.
The conflict is far form an end and the population of Gaza is desperate for a cease fire between Hamas and Israel. The world is concerning about this conflict and many states have applied restrictive measures or severed economic relations with various entities or individuals from Israel, in order to force the hand of the Tel Aviv administration in inciting the conflict.