This past Saturday morning, Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas rockets struck Israel, hitting cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem along with Hamas gunmen entering Israel and attacks being carried out through sea. This date is significant as it came exactly 50 years and one day after the Yom Kippur War as well as on the Jewish Holiday Simchat Torah taking the whole country by surprise.
Hamas is a Palestinian militant group which controls the Gaza Strip, a 25 by 10 mile area bordering Egypt which contains around 2.3 million people.
Hamas, according to the BBC, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the rise of an Islamic state in its place; it also receives funding from Iran, a historic enemy of Israel.
This is not the first war between Israel and Hamas, as several skirmishes have erupted between the two, however this attack is unprecedented in its scale.
Israel has responded with airstrikes of Gaza and a mobilization of 30,000 reserve troops. So far, at least 900 Israelis and 687 Palestinians have been killed, with several thousand injured.
As of right now, it is unknown if or how the war will escalate but the United States, who expressed their support of Israel, has warned Iran against involvement. This is complicated however by the recent hostage negotiation last month in which the US gave Iran 6 billion dollars. United States’ response has also been slowed due to the recent upheaval in the House of Representatives with the ousting of Kevin McCarthy.
Between this and Ukraine last year, war threatens to become a normality in this decade.
