For a while, Israel and Gaza enjoyed a period of relative calm, but by 2014, Hamas faced intense economic and political pressure as Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, viewed Hamas as allied with his archnemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood.
How did the terror organization Hamas acquire immense power and, with its influence in the region, be able to launch the most brutal attack on Israel on 7 October?
For over a decade, Israel has clashed with Hamas in Gaza, with cycles of violence that California-based think tank Rand Corp. said were defined by periods of intense fighting followed by relative lulls.
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel captured Gaza and placed it under military administration, the conflict with Palestinians who developed settlements there had raged.
Over time, that struggle led to the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that lasted from 1987 to 1993, and the emergence of Hamas, the militant Islamist group that now governs Gaza.
Hamas became powerful as leftist secular groups, such as Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, lost influence.
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The 1993 Oslo Accords ended the First Intifada, creating the Palestinian Authority as the governing body of the Palestinian people and stipulating that the PLO would recognize Israel's right to exist.
Ultimately, frustration over delays in implementing the Oslo Accords and tensions over Israel's continued grip on the Palestinians boiled over, sparking the Second Intifada in 2000, a period of intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence.
This led Israel to fortify its border with Gaza and, in 2005, to withdraw from the territory completely after nearly 40 years of occupation.
In a struggle between Hamas and Fatah, Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, as it morphed into a hybrid entity that is part terrorist organization and part pseudo-state.
Hostilities between Hamas and Israel led to the First Gaza War and Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, which ended quickly with Israel's victory and withdrawal in late January 2009.
Between 11 and 13 November 2012, more than 200 rockets and mortar rounds were fired into Israel from Gaza, wounding dozens of civilians and damaging property.
On 14 November, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense, with the targeted killing of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari and pinpoint attacks against other targets.
Over the eight-day conflict, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired more than 1,456 rockets into Israel, hitting Tel Aviv for the first time since the Iraqi Scud attacks during the 1991 Gulf War.
In response, the Israeli Air Force struck more than 1,500 targets in Gaza, including rocket launchers, weapon stocks, and Hamas government infrastructure.
Rand narrated that Israel then mobilized 57,000 reservists and deployed ground forces along Gaza's border, but the ground incursion never occurred.
On 21 November 2012, a ceasefire brokered by Egypt went into effect.
For a while, Israel and Gaza enjoyed a period of relative calm. Still, by 2014, Hamas faced intense economic and political pressure as Egypt's new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, viewed Hamas as allied with his archnemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt closed smuggling tunnels, denying Hamas one of its key revenue sources. The mixture of political and economic pressures sparked increasing levels of violence.
Operation Protective Edge was launched on 8 July 2014 to target Hamas militants and infrastructure.
The air campaign failed to destroy Hamas' tunnel network. Israel thereafter launched a ground incursion.
Although the Israel Defense Forces pushed only a few kilometers into Gaza to find and destroy Hamas' extensive cross-border tunnels, the IDF sporadically encountered fierce pockets of resistance in such places as Shuja'iya, where the IDF Golani Brigade fought one of the most intense battles of the war. (To be continued)
