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Israel has declared war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented attack by air, sea and land on Saturday.
The large-scale surprise attack killed at least 900 people in Israel, prompting a deadly volley of Israeli retaliatory air strikes on Gaza that killed at least 560 people.
As they retreated to Gaza, the militants said they took at least 100 hostages with them. Israel has promised that Hamas will pay a heavy price and is now potentially preparing a ground attack on the Gaza Strip.
Here’s what we know so far.
Gaza militants fired thousands of rockets into Israeli cities on Saturday morning before breaching the heavily fortified border fence with Israel, sending militants deep into Israeli territory. There, Hamas gunmen killed hundreds of people, including civilians and soldiers, and took hostages, sometimes from their homes.
It took more than two days for Israeli troops to regain control as fighting raged in the streets. On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that it had retaken control of all Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip on the southern border following the end of fighting with Hamas.
The attacks were unprecedented in tactics and scale, as Israel had not faced its opponents in street battles on its own territory since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. There has never been a terrorist attack of this magnitude in which so many civilians died. While Hamas has kidnapped Israelis before, it has never taken dozens of hostages at once, including children and the elderly.
Hamas called the operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” and said the attack was in response to Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the ongoing siege of Gaza.
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In response to the attack, Israel declared war and launched “Operation Swords of Iron,” which has so far attacked around 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, killing hundreds.
The IDF has urged civilians in Gaza to immediately leave their residential areas for their safety, as Israeli military operations continue to target Hamas and have closed all border crossings between Israel and Gaza, potentially setting the stage for a ground attack into the enclave.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday that he had ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. “No electricity, no food, no fuel. “Everything is closed,” he said, adding that water is also not being delivered.
As of Monday, at least 560 people had been killed in Gaza, including at least 20 children, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said. Another 2,900 were injured.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians existed before Israel was founded in 1948. Thousands of people on both sides have been killed and many more injured over the decades.
The violence was particularly acute this year. The number of Palestinians – militants and civilians – killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year is the highest in nearly two decades. The same goes for Israelis and foreigners – most of them civilians – killed in Palestinian attacks.
Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in the 1967 war and withdrew its troops and settlers in 2005. The area, home to about two million Palestinians, fell under Hamas control in 2007 after a brief civil war with Fatah, a rival Palestinian faction that is the backbone of the Palestinian Authority.
After Hamas took control, Israel and Egypt imposed a strict siege on the territory, which is still ongoing. Israel also maintains an air and sea blockade of Gaza. Human Rights Watch has described the area as an “open-air prison.” More than half of the population lives in poverty and food insecurity, and almost 80% of the population relies on humanitarian assistance.
Hamas and Israel have fought several wars. Before Saturday’s operation, the last war between the two took place in 2021, which lasted 11 days and killed at least 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.
Saturday’s attack came almost 50 years to the day after the 1973 war, when Israel’s Arab neighbors launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
Amir Cohen/Portal
Israeli soldiers scan an area near Sderot in southern Israel on Monday as rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel.
Hamas is an Islamist organization with a military wing that was founded in 1987 and grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist group founded in Egypt in the late 1920s.
The group, like most Palestinian factions and political parties, insists that Israel is an occupying power and is seeking to liberate the Palestinian territories. It views Israel as an illegitimate state and calls for its downfall.
Unlike some other Palestinian factions, Hamas refuses to cooperate with Israel. In 1993, it rejected the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which stipulated that the PLO would abandon armed resistance against Israel in return for the promise of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. The agreements also created the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Hamas presents itself as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority, which has recognized Israel and participated with it in several failed peace initiatives. The Palestinian Authority, whose credibility has suffered among Palestinians over the years, is now led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on Israel over the years and has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel. Israel accuses its arch-enemy Iran of supporting the group.
Oded Balilty/AP
Israelis inspect the rubble of a building in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sunday, a day after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.
Israel is now on a war footing and has already begun mobilizing troops for a possible ground operation in Gaza. They have said they will exact a heavy price from Hamas for their attack and plan to remove Israeli hostages from the area.
Israel has dealt with hostage-taking before, but never on this scale. In the past, militants have mostly demanded the release of prisoners held in Israeli prisons in exchange for captured Israelis. In 2011, Israel traded 1,027 Palestinians for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and in 2004 it released more than two dozen Lebanese and Arab prisoners – including two senior Hezbollah officials – for Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli businessman and army reserve colonel, and the free bodies of three IDF soldiers. In 2008, Israel released five Palestinian and five Lebanese prisoners and returned the bodies of nearly 200 Arab fighters in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.
It is unclear what the militants will demand for the 100 or more hostages that Hamas says it has captured. Their presence in Gaza will undoubtedly complicate any Israeli military operation there.
In the meantime, the IDF says it plans to take control of the Gaza Strip. His spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said the goal was to “end the Gaza enclave” and “control the entire enclave.”
Senior Hamas member Saleh al-Arouri told Al Jazeera Arabic on Saturday that Hamas was “ready for all options, including war and escalation at all levels.”
“We are prepared for the worst case scenario, including a ground invasion, which will be the best decision for us to end this battle,” al-Arouri said.
Maya Alleruzzo/AP
A relative of an Israeli missing since the Hamas attack cries during a news conference in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Sunday.
Hamas’s operation was carried out in a sophisticated and coordinated manner and would have required significant planning. There is widespread speculation that the group may have received help from abroad, which, if proven, could raise the specter of a larger regional war.
According to Israel, Iran supports Hamas with around $100 million per year. The US State Department said in 2021 that the group receives funding, weapons and training from Iran, as well as some funds raised in Gulf Arab states.
“Of course Iran is in the picture,” a US official told CNN. “They have supported Hamas and Hezbollah for years.”
A senior Biden administration official said Saturday that it was too early to say whether Iran was directly involved in the attack, but that Washington would monitor the matter “very closely.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke by phone with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday and then congratulated the Palestinian people on their “victory” over Israel. However, on Monday, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the Islamic Republic was “not involved in Palestine’s response,” referring to the Hamas attack. “It will be taken exclusively by Palestine itself,” it said.
According to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the United States has now sent a strike group of aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean. A US official told CNN that the US is also sending more warplanes to the Middle East to deter possible aggression by Iran or an expansion of fighting beyond Israel’s borders.
Israel could also face the danger of new fronts opening in the war. Of its immediate neighbors, only Jordan and Egypt are at peace; it is officially at war with Lebanon and Syria. Israel has said it is ready in the event of attacks from those two countries.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, praised Hamas’ attack and said it was in contact with Palestinian militant groups “at home and abroad,” its Al Manar channel said. On Sunday, the group claimed responsibility for attacking three Israeli sites in an area called Shebaa Farms with rockets and artillery. The area is considered by Lebanon to be occupied by Israel. Israel responded with artillery fire.
On Monday, the IDF said it had killed “a number of armed suspects” who crossed into Israel from Lebanon and that soldiers had searched the area. Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said on Monday his country did not want to be drawn into the conflict.