2014 Gaza War
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, and Battle of the Withered Grain, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory governed by Hamas since 2007 and which was occupied by Israel since 1967 until its disengagement in 2005. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces initiated Operation Brother's Keeper, in which it killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and imprisoned more than 600. Hamas reportedly did not retaliate but resumed rocket attacks on Israel more than two weeks later, following the killing of one of its militants by an Israeli airstrike on 29 June. This escalation triggered a seven-week-long conflict between the two sides, one of the deadliest outbreaks of open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in decades. The war resulted in over two thousand deaths, the vast majority of which were Gazan Palestinian civilians. This includes a total of six Israeli civilians who were killed as a result of the conflict.
The Israeli military operation aimed to stop rocket fire into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Conversely, Hamas' attacks aimed to bring international pressure onto Israel with the strategic goal of forcing the latter to lift the naval and air blockade of the Gaza Strip; among its other goals were to end Israel's attacks on Palestinians, obtain a third party to monitor and guarantee compliance with a ceasefire, release Palestinian political prisoners and overcome its isolation. According to the BBC, Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in retaliation to the rocket attacks by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian militant groups.
On 7 July, after seven Hamas militants died in a tunnel explosion in Khan Yunis that was caused either by an Israeli airstrike or an accidental explosion of their own munitions, Hamas assumed responsibility for rockets fired into Israel, and subsequently launched 40 more rockets towards Israel. The Israeli aerial operation officially began the following day, and on 17 July, it was expanded to include a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of destroying Gaza's tunnel system; the Israeli ground invasion ended on 5 August. On 26 August, an open-ended ceasefire was announced. By this time, the IDF reported that Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian militant groups had fired 4,564 rockets and mortars into Israel, with over 735 projectiles having been intercepted mid-flight and shot down by Israel's Iron Dome. Most Gazan mortar and rocket fire was inaccurate, and consequently hit open land; more than 280 projectiles had landed within the Gaza Strip, and 224 had struck residential areas. Palestinian rocketry also killed 13 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, 11 of them children. The IDF attacked 5,263 targets in the Gaza Strip; at least 34 known tunnels were destroyed and two-thirds of Hamas's 10,000-rocket arsenal was either used up or destroyed.
Between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed during the conflict while between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded. Gazan civilian casualty estimates range between 70 percent by the Gaza Health Ministry, 65 percent by the United Nations' Protection Cluster by OCHA, and 36 percent by Israeli officials. The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing. Rebuilding costs were calculated to run from over the course of 20 years. 67 Israeli soldiers, 5 Israeli civilians and one Thai civilian were killed while 469 Israeli soldiers and 261 Israeli civilians were injured. On the Israeli side, the economic impact of the operation is estimated to have had an impact of and a GDP loss of 0.4 percent.
Background
In 2005, following the conclusion of the Second Intifada, Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip, which it had previously occupied since 1967. The unilateral withdrawal plan began in August 2005 and was completed in September 2005. Nonetheless, the ICRC, the UN and various human rights organizations consider Israel still to be the de facto occupying power due to its control of Gaza's borders, air space and territorial waters.
In 2006, Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative elections. This outcome surprised Israel and the United States who had anticipated the return of the Fatah opposition to power and, together with the Quartet, they demanded Hamas accept all previous agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist, and renounce violence. When Hamas refused, stating that the demand left it "handcuffed", Israel cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority. In mid-2006, an Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid. The United States and Israel, in response to Fatah moves in October 2006 to form a unity government with Hamas, tried to undo the elections by arming and training Fatah to overthrow Hamas in Gaza. In June 2007, Hamas took complete power of Gaza by force.
Israel then defined Gaza as a "hostile territory" forming no part of a sovereign state and put Gaza under a comprehensive economic and political blockade, which also denied access to a third of its arable land and 85% of its fishing areas. It has led to considerable economic damage and humanitarian problems in Gaza. The overwhelming consensus of international institutions is that the blockade is a form of collective punishment and illegal. Israel maintains that the blockade is legal and necessary to limit Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip on its cities and to prevent Hamas from obtaining other weapons. Israel carried out Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 with the stated aim of stopping rocket attacks from Hamas militants. The UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict concluded that the operation was "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability". The Israeli government's analysis concludes that the report perverts international law to serve a political agenda and sends a "legally unfounded message to states everywhere confronting terrorism that international law has no effective response to offer them".
First Hamas–Fatah reconciliation (2011)
Influenced in the Arab Spring and by demonstrations in Ramallah and Gaza, the gap between Hamas and Fatah was bridged in 2011. After the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas declared his willingness to travel to Gaza and sign an agreement, the IDF killed two Hamas activists in Gaza; the IDF stated the killings were in response to the launching of a single Qassam rocket, which hit no one, but Yedioth Ahronoth's Alex Fishman argued they were a "premeditated escalation" by Israel. In an interview with CNN, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the reconciliation talks were calls for Israel's destruction, and strongly opposed the idea of a unity government.November 2012 ceasefire and its violations
On 14 November 2012, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defence in the Gaza Strip. The operation was preceded by a period with a number of mutual Israeli–Palestinian responsive attacks. According to the Israeli government, the operation began in response to the launch of over 100 rockets at Israel during a 24-hour period and an explosion caused by IEDs, which occurred near Israeli soldiers, on the Israeli side of a tunnel passing under the Israeli West Bank barrier. The Israeli government stated that the aims of the military operation were to halt rocket attacks against civilian targets originating from the Gaza Strip and to disrupt the capabilities of militant organizations. The Palestinians blamed the Israeli government for the upsurge in violence, accusing the IDF of attacks on Gazan civilians in the days leading up to the operation. They cited the blockade of the Gaza Strip and the occupation of West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as the reason for rocket attacks. A week later, on 21 November, Egypt brokered a ceasefire to the conflict which contained the following agreements:- Israel should stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip land, sea and air, including incursions and targeting of individuals.
- All Palestinian factions shall stop all hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel, including rocket attacks and all attacks along the border.
- The crossings should be opened, facilitating the movement of people and goods; Israel should refrain from restricting residents' movements and from targeting residents in border areas; procedures of implementation should be dealt with 24 hours after the start of the ceasefire.
Violations
In the first three months after the IDF Operation Pillar of Defense, according to Ben White, two mortar shells struck Israeli territory, while four Gazans were shot dead and 91 were wounded by Israeli forces who fired inside Gazan territory on 63 occasions, made 13 incursions into the Strip, and attacked the Gazan fishing fleet 30 times. Israeli attacks on Gaza steadily increased during the second half of 2013, notwithstanding the decrease in attacks from Gaza.
From December 2012 to late June/early July 2014, Hamas did not fire rockets into Israel, and tried to police other groups doing so. These efforts were largely successful; Netanyahu stated in March 2014 that the rocket fire in the past year was the "lowest in a decade." According to Shabak, in the first half of 2014 there were 181 rocket attacks compared to 55 rocket attacks in whole 2013.
As occasional rocket fire continued, the blockade of Gaza continued in direct violation of the ceasefire agreement. "Crossings were repeatedly shut and buffer zones were reinstated. Imports declined, exports were blocked, and fewer Gazans were given exit permits to Israel and the West Bank."
Israel halted construction material going to Gaza after it stated that it had discovered a tunnel leading into Israel, some 300 m from a kibbutz. The IDF said it was the third tunnel discovered that year and that the previous two were packed with explosives.
According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were 85 rocket attacks in the first five months of 2014. Most of the 85 rockets were fired in March, after the IDF killed 3 members of Islamic Jihad. The members of the PIJ say they were firing rockets in response to an incursion by Israeli tanks and bulldozers into Gazan territory east of the Khan Yunis area. The IDF said they were conducting routine military patrols near the Gaza border when they came under fire, and thus responded with airstrikes.