Gaza War

The Gaza War began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals and taking 251 hostage. The attack triggered a large-scale Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip involving a force of over 529,000 personnel against Hamas formations estimated at 20,000–40,000 fighters. Palestinian casualties from the offensive exceeded 73,000 killed, with studies published in The Lancet characterizing official figures as likely undercounts. The conflict became a focal point of international legal and political dispute: UN bodies, NGOs, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars concluded that Israel's conduct constituted genocide under international law, and multiple states supported proceedings before the International Court of Justice. Israel and the United States denied that characterization. The war remained unresolved and was prosecuted within the broader context of the longstanding Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflicts, with the Hamas political and military leadership—including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif—arrayed against Israeli military and political leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The IDF airstrike on al-Shati refugee camp on 9 October 2023 struck one of Gaza's most densely populated areas, home to more than 90,000 refugees, destroying four mosques and killing people inside according to Palestinian media reports. A follow-on strike on 12 October killed 13 people. The strikes drew attention to the scale of bombardment in the early phase of the Gaza war and to the humanitarian exposure of civilian infrastructure in the Strip's largest refugee camps.

Al-Shifa Hospital, described as the largest medical complex in Gaza, became a focal point of the Gaza War when Israeli forces placed it under siege in mid-November 2023. Israel stated that the facility concealed a Hamas command and control center beneath it, framing the operation as targeting military infrastructure embedded within a protected medical site. The episode drew international attention to questions of humanitarian law and the use of civilian infrastructure in urban warfare. A second major Israeli raid on the complex followed in March 2024, indicating that the site retained operational significance across multiple phases of the conflict.

The battle at Re'im on October 7, 2023, placed the Hamas assault directly at the headquarters of the Gaza Division, the Israeli military formation responsible for the sector facing Gaza. An attack reaching the divisional command base within five hours of the broader Hamas offensive opening signaled the scale and ambition of the incursion. The engagement at Re'im was part of the wider October 7 attack that initiated the Gaza War, making it one of the opening confrontations of a conflict that would draw sustained Israeli military operations into Gaza in the months that followed.

The Battle of Sderot formed part of the large-scale Hamas surprise attack launched on 7 October 2023 against southern Israel, an assault widely condemned as an act of terrorism. Sderot, situated close to the border with the Gaza Strip, had long been exposed to rocket fire and incursions during the broader Gaza–Israel conflict, and the October 7 attack represented a sharp escalation of that pattern. Hamas militants killed numerous civilians and police officers in the city. The assault on Sderot was one node within a wider coordinated offensive that precipitated the Gaza War of 2023, driving the Israeli military response that defined the subsequent campaign.

The Battle of Zikim was one of several simultaneous engagements launched as part of Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas's stated objective was the capture of Zikim's military training base. The Israeli navy succeeded in preventing the majority of Hamas militants from landing on the beach, though an estimated 11 militants breached that perimeter via a vessel that slipped through. The training base garrison held its position, but two other military bases in the area were overrun. A civilian security team stopped a further incursion into the adjacent kibbutz. During the engagement, Hamas militants carried out a massacre on the beach, killing 17 civilian beachgoers. The battle illustrated the layered nature of the 7 October assault, in which coastal infiltration routes were exploited alongside the better-documented land breaches, and in which the burden of initial defense fell on both military garrisons and civilian security personnel.

On 19 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building within the compound of the Church of Saint Porphyrius, a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. At the time of the strike, approximately 450 Palestinian civilians, predominantly Christians, had been sheltering within the compound. Eighteen were killed and between 12 and at least 20 were injured; the church building itself was not damaged. The incident drew international attention to the conditions facing Gaza's Christian minority during the conflict and to the broader question of civilian shelter sites coming under fire in densely populated Gaza City. As one of the earliest high-profile strikes to directly affect a recognized religious compound being used for civilian shelter, it became a point of reference in debates over the conduct of the war and the protection of civilians in the urban theater.

On 9 October 2023, Israel announced a 'total blockade' of the Gaza Strip following the October 7 attacks, cutting off food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity. The blockade became a central and contested element of the Gaza War, with Israel linking its removal to the return of hostages held by Hamas. Critics, including 27 European countries and over 100 international aid organizations as of August 2025, condemned the measure as collective punishment and an apparent war crime. The blockade has been credited with contributing significantly to what has been characterized as the Gaza genocide, making it one of the most internationally disputed instruments employed during the conflict.

From 9 October 2023, the IDF conducted airstrikes against Jabalia refugee camp as part of the broader Gaza War, designating the camp a stronghold for Hamas and other militant groups. The strikes drew international attention to the tension between Israel's stated military objectives — targeting militant infrastructure in densely populated areas — and the humanitarian status of a refugee camp. Within the Gaza campaign, Jabalia became a recurring focus of Israeli air operations, reflecting the IDF's assessment that Hamas had embedded command and logistical presence within civilian population centers.

The attack on Nahal Oz kibbutz and its adjacent military base formed part of the broader October 7 Hamas-led assault on southern Israel. The strike resulted in more than 60 Israeli soldiers and 15 civilians killed, with additional soldiers and eight civilians taken captive into the Gaza Strip. The IDF also reported that several bodies were removed to Gaza following the attack. The combination of military and civilian casualties at a single site, along with the abduction of both soldiers and civilians, made Nahal Oz one of the more consequential individual nodes of the October 7 operation, contributing to the scale of loss and the hostage crisis that became a central issue of the subsequent Gaza War.

The October 7 attacks were a coordinated series of armed incursions launched from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, carried out by Hamas and allied Palestinian militant groups during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. Involving a Hamas force of approximately 6,000 fighters, the attacks resulted in 1,195 Israeli casualties and 1,609 Hamas casualties. They constituted the first large-scale invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, marking a fundamental rupture in the security posture Israel had maintained around Gaza. The attacks directly triggered the ongoing Gaza War, prompting Israel to launch a large-scale military operation in Gaza. As the initiating event of that conflict, the October 7 attacks set its strategic terms and defined the war's opening conditions.

An explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on 17 October 2023 killed or injured a large number of displaced Palestinians who had gathered there seeking shelter during the Gaza War. The incident drew immediate international attention, with disputed accounts of its cause generating sharp diplomatic friction and shaping the wider political context of the conflict. Because the site held civilians who had fled fighting elsewhere in Gaza, the event highlighted the conditions facing the displaced population and intensified international debate over civilian protection during the war. The question of responsibility remained contested, compounding its impact on international responses to the conflict.

The Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv on 19 July 2024 marked a significant escalation in the Houthi campaign against Israel conducted under the banner of solidarity with Gaza. The drone struck an apartment building near the U.S. Embassy branch office on Ben Yehuda Street, killing one person and injuring ten others. Israeli authorities attributed the failure to intercept to human error, while the Houthis claimed the drone was designed to evade the Iron Dome air defense system. The strike demonstrated that Houthi long-range drone capability posed a direct threat to Israel's economic center, and the failure of both interception systems and air raid sirens to activate raised questions about the reliability of Israeli air defenses against unconventional aerial threats operating at the margins of detection.

On 20 September 2024, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an apartment building in the Dahieh suburb of Beirut, killing at least 45 people. Among the dead were Hezbollah commanders Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wehbe, along with 14 other Hezbollah militants. The remaining victims were civilians, including at least three children and seven women, with at least 68 others wounded. The strike represented a direct targeting of Hezbollah's command structure in a densely populated residential area of Beirut, extending Israeli operations during the Gaza War into Lebanese urban terrain and escalating pressure on Hezbollah leadership. The high civilian toll alongside the elimination of senior commanders illustrated the recurring tension between targeting militant leadership embedded in civilian areas and the humanitarian cost of such strikes.

The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, removed the organization's longtime leader during an active phase of cross-border hostilities linked to the Gaza War. Nasrallah had led Hezbollah for decades and was the central figure coordinating its military and political operations; his elimination in a single strike represented a severe disruption to the group's command structure at a moment when Hezbollah was engaged in sustained exchanges with Israeli forces along the Lebanese frontier. The strike was part of a broader Israeli campaign against Hezbollah leadership and infrastructure that intensified in late September 2024, signaling a significant escalation in Israel's northern front operations concurrent with its ongoing campaign in Gaza.

On 13 July 2024, Israeli airstrikes struck the Al-Mawasi area near Khan Yunis, killing at least 90 Palestinians, including women and children, and wounding over 300. Israel stated the strikes were directed at senior Hamas leadership. The attack drew immediate attention because Al-Mawasi had been designated a humanitarian zone where displaced civilians were directed to seek shelter. Survivors reported receiving no warning before the strikes. The incident highlighted the tension within the Gaza War between Israeli targeting of Hamas command figures and the protection of civilian displacement zones, raising questions about the viability of designated safe areas as the conflict continued.

The Majdal Shams attack marked a significant escalation point in the Gaza War's northern front, striking civilian infrastructure in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The rocket strike on a football pitch killed 12 Syrian Druze children and wounded at least 42 others, making it one of the deadliest single incidents affecting the Druze community in the region during the conflict. The attack intensified pressure on Israeli decision-makers regarding the northern front and raised the stakes of cross-border exchanges that had been ongoing alongside the primary conflict in Gaza. The targeting of a civilian recreational site, with victims predominantly between the ages of 10 and 16, drew broad international attention to the expanding geographic scope of the war beyond Gaza itself.

Operation Arnon on 8 June 2024 resulted in the rescue of four hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp, marking one of the most significant hostage recovery actions of the Gaza War. The operation simultaneously produced one of the highest single-day Palestinian death tolls of the conflict, with at least 276 Palestinians killed and over 698 injured. The scale of Palestinian casualties led a number of sources to characterize the operation as a massacre, and among the largest such incidents of the war. The operation intensified international scrutiny of Israeli military conduct in Gaza and became a focal point in broader debates over the proportionality of military operations in densely populated areas during the conflict.

On 26 May 2024, an Israeli Air Force strike hit a displacement camp in the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah, igniting fires that killed between 45 and 50 Palestinians and injured more than 200. The strike became the deadliest single incident of the Rafah offensive and drew widespread international attention to the conduct of operations in Rafah, where large numbers of displaced civilians had concentrated. Referred to in some reporting as the Rafah tent massacre or the Tent Massacre, the incident intensified scrutiny of Israeli military operations in the area and raised questions about civilian protection during the offensive phase targeting Rafah.

On 1 April 2024, Israeli drones struck a three-vehicle World Central Kitchen convoy in the Gaza Strip, killing seven aid workers who had been overseeing food transfers from a makeshift pier to a warehouse in northern Gaza. The strike drew immediate international attention to the conditions under which humanitarian operations were being conducted in the territory, which the overview describes as having been pushed close to famine by Israel's invasion and blockade. The incident intensified scrutiny of the Gaza war's humanitarian consequences and the safety of aid organizations operating within the Strip, raising questions about coordination between military forces and civilian relief efforts in active conflict zones.

An Israeli double-tap strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis on 25 August 2025 killed 22 people, among them five journalists embedded at or near the facility: a Reuters cameraman, an Associated Press freelance journalist, an Al Jazeera cameraman, a Reuters-affiliated freelance photographer, and a correspondent working for Middle East Eye and Quds News Network. The strike drew immediate international attention to press casualties in the Gaza War, concentrating scrutiny on the protection of media personnel and medical infrastructure under the laws of armed conflict. The death of correspondents representing multiple major international outlets in a single incident represented one of the highest single-day journalist tolls of the conflict and intensified existing debates over Israeli targeting practices in densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip.

Launched on 21 January 2025, Operation Iron Wall marked a significant escalation in Israeli military activity in the occupied West Bank during the broader Gaza War period. Initially directed against the Jenin Brigades in Jenin, the operation expanded on its fourth day to Tulkarm and other Palestinian cities and towns, signaling a broader scope than preceding West Bank operations. Two features distinguished Iron Wall from earlier Israeli campaigns: it represented a strategically more aggressive posture against West Bank militancy, and it marked the first instance of the Palestinian Authority directly participating alongside the IDF in a military operation. That PA involvement altered the political geometry of Israeli-Palestinian security coordination, implicating the Authority in active combat operations rather than peripheral cooperation. Israeli casualties recorded were substantial at 2,025, reflecting the intensity of sustained urban operations across multiple West Bank centers.

On 9 September 2025, the IDF struck the Leqtaifiya district of Doha, Qatar, targeting Hamas leadership gathered in a Qatari government residential complex to discuss a U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal. The strike killed and wounded Hamas members, Qatari security forces, and civilians. It marked Israel's first known attack inside Qatar and its first direct strike on any Gulf Cooperation Council member state, crossing a threshold that had previously been observed throughout the Gaza war. The timing — during active ceasefire negotiations — and the location within a Qatari government compound introduced significant diplomatic consequences, implicating both Israel-Qatar relations and Qatar's role as a key intermediary in ceasefire talks.

Operation Rough Rider, launched on March 15, 2025, marked the first large-scale U.S. military operation in the Middle East during President Donald Trump's second term. The campaign targeted Houthi radar systems, air defenses, and ballistic missile and drone launch infrastructure that had been used to attack commercial shipping and naval vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The strikes were a direct response to the sustained Houthi interdiction campaign against maritime traffic, which had disrupted international shipping lanes in the context of the broader Gaza War. The United Kingdom joined U.S. forces in conducting strikes on April 30, 2025, expanding the coalition character of the operation. The campaign represented a significant escalation of Western military pressure on Houthi capabilities, though no recorded outcome establishes the degree to which the strikes degraded Houthi operational capacity or altered the maritime threat environment.

Operation Gideon's Chariots, approved by Israel's security cabinet on 4 May 2025 and launched on 16 May, represented a significant expansion of Israeli military operations in Gaza. The operation combined land, air, and sea forces with the stated aims of defeating Hamas, dismantling its military and governing capabilities, and seizing control of approximately three quarters of the Gaza Strip. By 4 July, the IDF reported controlling around 65% of Gaza, though that figure was disputed by outside observers who argued it understated the degree of control Hamas retained in the territory. The offensive drew international condemnation, with the United Nations Human Rights Office characterizing it as tantamount to ethnic cleansing, marking a sharp deterioration in international perception of the campaign. The operation thus represented a major escalation in the Gaza War's territorial dimension while leaving the core question of Hamas's actual degradation and governing capacity contested.

Operation Might and Sword, launched on 18 March 2025, ended the ceasefire that had been in place since January 2025, marking Israel's return to large-scale offensive operations in the Gaza Strip. Carried out in coordination with the United States, the missile and artillery strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians, including 263 women and children according to the Gaza Health Ministry, making it one of the deadliest single episodes of the Gaza War. The operation signaled a deliberate collapse of the ceasefire framework and set the conditions for a renewed ground campaign. The following day, the IDF announced a ground offensive to retake the Netzarim Corridor, a strategic axis from which Israeli forces had withdrawn in February 2025, indicating that the operation served as the opening strike of a broader effort to reassert territorial control over key areas Israel had previously vacated under the ceasefire terms.