Hamas’s attack on Israel, and Israel’s offensive in Gaza in response, is yet another escalation in a long conflict that has already left thousands dead on both sides.
The latest round of violence between Israel and Palestine began after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Israel ever on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people, and capturing nearly 200, by the latest estimates. Israel responded with an intense counteroffensive that included an order to carry out a “complete siege” of Gaza, and it appears to be readying for a ground assault.
Israeli airstrikes have already devastated many civilian areas, and the death toll in Gaza is growing amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis. Foreign passport holders in Gaza and aid convoys carrying life-saving supplies from Egypt have lined up at the Egyptian border crossing waiting for an agreement that would allow the border to open but that has so far failed to materialize.
The death and destruction are the bloody culmination of decades of fighting rooted in a complicated history. To understand the current violence, you have to understand how we got here. If you’re just catching up, here are the key dates that have led up to this critical inflection point.
1917: The Balfour Declaration
The 1800s were a time of great colonial expansion as European empires jockeyed to take over other parts of the world, including the Middle East. As early as the 1840s, the British saw Palestine as an opportunity to carve out a sphere of influence in the Middle East, where they were competing with the French and Russians. But it wasn’t until World War I, in which they were fighting the Ottomans who controlled Palestine, that the British formalized their support for the idea of a Jewish state in the region.
In its 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British government unilaterally called for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, despite the fact that Jewish…
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