(Clockwise from top left): People, who fled their villages in southern Lebanon, take refuge at a school turned temporary shelter in the capital Beirut; Smoke billows over southern Lebanon as pictured from Marjayoun, near the border with Israel; Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after a rocket, fired from Lebanon, hit a local municipality storage in Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel; and Lebanese citizens who fled from the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes on Sept. 23, sit in a pickup in Beirut.
| Photo Credit: AFP, Reuters and AP

After Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out the deadliest attack in Israeli history on October 7, 2023, Israel responded with a devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The air and ground operation has killed more than 41,700 people, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s Health Ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Hamas attacks

At dawn on October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrate Israel.

The unprecedented attack results in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. This toll includes hostages who subsequently died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas took 251 hostages back to Gaza, some as corpses. A year later, some 64 are still detained, while 117 have been freed and 70 confirmed dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to destroy Hamas, which is blacklisted as a “terrorist” organisation by the European Union and the United States.

Ground offensive

Israel begins bombing Gaza and further tightening its siege of the territory. On October 13, 2023, it tells civilians in northern Gaza to move south.

The United Nations later estimates that nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million is eventually displaced.

On October 27, 2023, Israel launches a ground offensive. On November 15, 2023, its troops raid Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, where Israel says Hamas has a command centre, an accusation the militants deny.

Truce and hostage swap

On November 24, 2023, a weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas takes effect.

Hamas releases 80 Israeli hostages in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Twenty-five other hostages, mainly Thai farm workers, are also freed. Israel allows more aid into Gaza via Egypt, but the humanitarian situation there remains dire.

When fighting resumes, Israel expands its actions into southern Gaza.

Aid hitches

On February 29, Gaza’s Health Ministry says 120 northern Gaza residents were shot dead by Israeli forces as they rushed towards a convoy of food aid. Israel says soldiers believed they “posed a threat”.

From early March, several countries airdrop aid into Gaza. A first aid ship from Cyprus arrives on March 15. On April 1, seven aid workers from the U.S. charity World Central Kitchen are killed in an Israeli strike, which the military calls a “tragic mistake”.

Israel-Iran tensions

On April 13, 2024, Iran pounds Israel with drones and missiles in retaliation for a deadly strike on its consulate in Damascus blamed on its arch-enemy. Most of the projectiles are intercepted.

Operations in the south

On May 7, 2024, the Israeli army launches a ground offensive in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where a majority of the territory’s people have sought shelter.

It takes control of the border crossing with Egypt, blocking a key entry point for aid, and targets safe areas, including tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people.

“On July 13, 2024, a strike in southern Gaza kills the chief of Hamas’s armed wing, Mohammed Deif,” Israel says.

Regional flare-up feared

On July 20, 2024, Israel attacks Yemen in retaliation for a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have repeatedly attacked Red Sea and Gulf of Aden shipping in solidarity with Gaza.

On the Israel-Lebanon border, almost daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah intensify. On July 27, 2024, in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, 12 children are killed in a rocket strike. Hezbollah denies responsibility.

Hezbollah’s top commander, Fuad Shukr, is killed in a Beirut suburb on July 30 in a retaliatory strike.

The next day, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh is killed in a strike in Iran, blamed on Israel. Hamas names Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza, to replace him.

Truce talks

Washington on August 16, 2024 presents a new truce deal, which Hamas immediately rejects. Negotiations mediated by Egypt, then Qatar, resume on August 22, 2024.

On August 25, Israel says it has thwarted a large-scale Hezbollah attack with air strikes into Lebanon. Hamas says it successfully launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel.

West Bank raid

On August 28, 2024, Israel launches a major operation against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

The United Nations calls for an immediate end to the raid.

After the military recovers the bodies of six hostages from Gaza on August 31, pressure mounts on the Israeli government to secure the release of the remaining captives, but Mr. Netanyahu does not budge over a truce.

Lebanon attacks

On September 17 and 18, 2024, thousands of Hezbollah members’ pagers and walkie-talkies explode across Lebanon, killing at least 39 people and wounding almost 3,000.

Israel had announced it was expanding its Gaza war aims to include securing the northern front with Lebanon, but does not claim responsibility.

Amid a mounting series of bombardments against Hezbollah, on September 27, 2024, an Israeli strike on its south Beirut stronghold kills the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah alongside an Iranian general in the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vows that Mr. Nasrallah’s death “will not be in vain”.

On October 1, 2024, Iran launches a barrage of missiles at Israel in what the Revolutionary Guards say is a response to the killings of Nasrallah and Haniyeh.

The attack comes the day Israel announced limited ground operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. More than 1,900 people have also been killed in Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began clashing last October, according to Lebanon’s health minister.

Tel Aviv:

In a targeted airstrike on Saturday, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) struck Beirut, resulting in the death of Eid Hassan Nashar, a high-ranking commander of Hezbollah’s Medium-Range Rocket Unit.

Sharing a post on X, the IDF wrote, “Dismantled: Hezbollah’s Missiles and Rockets Force. IAF fighter jets struck and eliminated commanders and infrastructure over the last week.” It added, “During an airstrike in Beirut on Saturday, Eid Hassan Nashar, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Medium-Range Rocket Unit, was eliminated.”

According to the IDF, Eid Hassan Nashar held key leadership roles within Hezbollah. He served as the Commander of the Surface-to-Surface Rocket Unit, overseeing the organisation’s day-to-day operations. The IDF stated, “Eid was a veteran commander in Hezbollah and played a significant role in the unit’s day-to-day operations. In the past, he served as the Commander of the Surface-to-Surface Rocket Unit and Deputy Commander of the Badr Unit.”

“Additionally, the commander, deputy commander and other commanders of Hezbollah’s Precision Missile Unit were eliminated. Just last week, this unit was responsible for firing towards central Israel,” the IDF added.

Meanwhile, in a precision strike, the IDF dismantled a Hezbollah surface-to-air missile launcher storage facility, located approximately 1.5 kilometres from Beirut’s international airport.

In a post on X, the IDF said, “A surface-to-air missile launcher storage facility that Hezbollah had positioned approximately 1.5 km from Beirut’s international airport was dismantled in a precise IDF strike.”

The IDF further asserted that the facility posed a threat to Lebanese and international airspace. “This infrastructure poses a threat to both Lebanese and international airspace. The IDF will continue to degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities in Lebanon,” the IDF stated.

A day earlier, the IDF had announced the deaths of the head of the Lebanon branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Nidal Abdel-Aal, and the head of the PFLP’s military office in Lebanon, Imad Odeh, in an intelligence-based strike.

The IDF also reported that Hamas’ Lebanon branch chief, Fateh Sherif, was killed in an airstrike. According to the IDF, Nidal Abdel-Aal took part in planning and executing terror attacks against Israel and directed terror activities in Judea and Samaria. He was responsible for the bus bombing attack in Beitar Illit and the shooting attack from a passing vehicle at the Huwara Junction in 2023.

In a post on X, the IDF stated, “Head of the Lebanon Branch of the PFLP terrorist organisation, Nidal Abdel-Aal, and Head of the PFLP’s Military Office in Lebanon, Imad Odeh, were eliminated in a joint IDF and ISA intelligence-based strike. Abdel-Aal took part in planning and carrying out terror attacks against Israel and directed terror activities in Judea and Samaria, operating to establish terror infrastructure for attacks on Israeli civilians. Abdel-Aal directed the bus bombing attack in Beitar Illit on March 9, 2023, and the shooting attack from a passing vehicle at the Huwara Junction on March 25, 2023, during which two IDF soldiers were injured.”

According to the IDF, Sherif was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives, as well as Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Israeli troops tied a wounded Palestinian man to a military vehicle during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, the army said Sunday, admitting that soldiers had violated operational procedures.

Footage of the incident, which occurred on Saturday, has gone viral and shows a Jenin resident strapped horizontally to the bonnet of a military jeep as it passes through a narrow alley.

The military said the Palestinian was wounded during a “counterterrorism operation” launched to apprehend wanted suspects.

During an exchange of fire between troops and militants, one of the suspects was wounded and apprehended, the military said in a statement.

“In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle,” the statement said. 

“The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values of the IDF (military),” it added.

“The incident will be investigated and dealt with accordingly,” the military said, adding that the wounded man was transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent for treatment.

Jenin has long been a stronghold for Palestinian groups, and the Israeli army routinely carries out raids in the city and adjacent refugee camp.

Violence in the West Bank, which had already surged before the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, has only escalated since.

At least 549 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 14 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The Gaza Strip has been gripped by more than eight months of war since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants took 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.

Israel’s military offensive on Gaza has since killed at least 37,551 people, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Israel battered Gaza on October 8 after suffering its bloodiest attack in decades, when Hamas fighters rampaged through Israeli towns killing 600 and abducting dozens more, as the spiralling violence threatened a major new war in West Asia.

Israeli air strikes hit housing blocks, tunnels, a mosque, and the homes of Hamas officials in Gaza, killing more than 370 people, including 20 children, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance for this black day”.

In a sign the conflict could spread beyond blockaded Gaza, Israel exchanged artillery and rocket fire with the Lebanon-based Iran-backed Hezbollah militia. In Alexandria, two Israeli tourists were shot dead along with their Egyptian guide.

Gunbattles continue

In southern Israel, Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli security forces 24 hours after a surprise, multi-pronged assault of rocket barrages and bands of gunmen who overran army bases and invaded border towns.

Follow live updates here

“My two little girls, they’re only babies. They’re not even five years old and three years old,” said Yoni Asher, who had seen video of gunmen seizing his wife and two small daughters after she took them to visit her mother, he said.

Israel’s military, which faces questions over its failure to prevent the attack, said it had regained control of most infiltration points along security barriers, killed hundreds of attackers and taken dozens more prisoner.

“We’re going to be attacking Hamas severely and this is going to be a long, long haul,” an Israeli military spokesperson told reporters. The military said that it had deployed tens of thousands of soldiers around Gaza, a narrow strip that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, and was starting to evacuate all Israelis living around the frontier of the territory.

Shelling in Gaza

“This is my fifth war. The war should stop. I don’t want to keep feeling this,” said Qassab al-Attar, a Palestinian wheelchair user in Gaza whose brothers carried him to shelter when Israeli forces shelled their house.

More than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have sought refuge in schools run by the United Nations, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency said.

The attack by Hamas, launched at dawn on Saturday, represented the biggest and deadliest incursion into Israel since Egypt and Syria launched a sudden assault in an effort to reclaim lost territory in the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.

At least 600 people have been killed, according to reports by Israeli TV stations. Israel has not released an official toll.

The conflict could undermine U.S.-backed moves towards normalising relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia – a security realignment that could threaten Palestinian hopes of self determination and hem in Hamas’ main backer, Iran.

Tehran’s other main regional ally, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fought a war with Israel in 2006 and said that its “guns and rockets” stand with Hamas. “We recommend Hezbollah not to come into this and I don’t think they will,” Israel’s army spokesperson said.

Israeli hostages

The debris from Saturday’s attack still lay around southern Israeli towns and border communities on Sunday morning and Israelis were reeling from the sight of bloodied bodies lying on suburban streets, in cars and in their homes.

Palestinian fighters escaped back into Gaza with dozens of hostages, including both soldiers and civilians. Hamas said it would issue a statement later on Sunday saying how many captives it had seized.

About 30 missing Israelis attending a dance party that was targeted during Saturday’s attack emerged from hiding on Sunday, Israeli media reported.

The capture of so many Israelis, some filmed being pulled through security checkpoints or driven, bleeding, into Gaza, adds another layer of complication for Netanyahu after previous episodes when hostages were exchanged for many Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas fired more rocket salvoes into Israel on Sunday, with air raid sirens sounding across the south, and the Israeli military said it would combine an evacuation of border areas with a search for more gunmen.

Retaliatory strikes

Israeli air strikes on Gaza began soon after the Hamas attack and continued overnight and into Sunday, destroying the group’s offices and training camps, but also houses and other buildings.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 370 people had been killed and 2,200 wounded in the retaliatory strikes.

In Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, people searched through the remains of a mosque early on Sunday. “We ended the night prayers and suddenly the mosque was bombed. They terrorised the children, the elderly and women,” said resident Ramez Hneideq.

The escalation comes against a backdrop of surging violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where a Palestinian authority exercises limited self-rule, opposed by Hamas that wants Israel destroyed.

Conditions in the West Bank have worsened under Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right government with more Israeli raids and assaults by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages, and the Palestinian Authority called for an emergency Arab League meeting.

Stalled peacemaking

Peacemaking has been stalled for years and Israeli politics have been convulsed this year by internal wrangles over Mr. Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul the judiciary.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that began in Gaza would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem. Gazans have lived under an Israeli-led blockade for 16 years, since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. “How many times have we warned you that the Palestinian people have been living in refugee camps for 75 years, and you refuse to recognise the rights of our people?” he said.

Western countries, led by the United States, denounced the attack. U.S. President Joe Biden issued a blunt warning to Iran and other countries: “This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks.

Across West Asia, there were demonstrations in support of Hamas, while Iran and Hezbollah praised the attack.

That Israel was caught completely off guard was lamented as one of the worst intelligence failures in its history, a shock to a nation that boasts of its intensive infiltration and monitoring of militants.

The main Tel Aviv Stock Exchange indices fell 6% on Sunday and investors expected the violence to prompt a move into gold and other safe-haven assets.

Rockets are launched by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, in Gaza, on October 7, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Just last week, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said Gaza, the tiny Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coast that has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade for over 16 years, was in a state of “stable instability”. Yet, on Saturday morning, Israel witnessed the largest attack from the enclave — and perhaps the worst security crisis in 50 years — when dozens of Hamas militants, using motorcycles, pickup trucks, boats, paragliders and mid-range rockets, launched a highly coordinated attack, infiltrating Israeli cities, hitting military bases and killing and taking hostage soldiers and civilians. The attacks, reminiscent of the 1973 Yom Kippur holiday attack by Egyptian and Syrian troops, took Israel by surprise. Israeli officials say at least 200 people were killed and hundreds of others injured. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose right-religious government’s key promise is Israel’s security, has declared war on Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs the Gaza strip.

While it’s too early to draw conclusions on the attack, Israel’s lack of preparedness or its possible impact on Israel’s continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories, one question that demands an urgent attention is why did Hamas launch such a massive incursion into Israel knowing that the response would be disproportionate. Israel, in the past, has showered fire and fury on Gazans, including civilians and children, in response to rocket attacks. Still, deterrence did not hold. Why? At least three factors–Palestinian, Israeli and geopolitical–could have influenced Hamas’s thinking.

Deepening occupation

Firstly, the Palestine-Israel relations have steadily deteriorated in recent years. Israel has been carrying out military raids in the occupied West Bank almost on a daily basis, besides tightening the screws of the occupation. At least 200 Palestinians and some 30 Israelis have been killed so far this year. In April, Israeli police raided Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest place of worship, triggering rocket attacks from Gaza, which were followed by Israeli air strikes. In May, Israel and the Palestine Islamic Jihad, which is based in Gaza, fought a short battle, and in July, Israel carried out a major raid in the West Bank town of Jenin, which has emerged as a hotbed of militancy in the West Bank.

Currently, there is no peace process. Violence is perverse. And anger has been building up among Palestinians against both the Israeli occupiers as well as the Palestinian Authority, the provisional administration of the West Bank that’s led by President Mohammad Abbas’s Fatah. By launching such a massive attack from Gaza (which is controlled by Hamas) and asking “all Arabs of Palestine”, including the Israeli Arab citizens, who make up some 20% of the Israel’s population, to take up arms against the state of Israel, Hamas is both trying to cash in on the public anger against occupation and emerge as the sole pole of the Palestinian cause.

Divisions in Israeli society

Secondly, Israel is also going through a difficult phase. The country is ruled by its most right-wing government whose key domestic agenda is to overhaul the structures of power so that the elected government would be more powerful than other institutions. The government has already pushed one part of its ambitious legislative agenda seeking to curtail the powers of the judiciary through Parliament, which triggered massive protests. Thousands of military reservists, the backbone of the IDF, had joined the sit-ins and threatened to resign in protest against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul plan. So the government’s focus was on its legislative agenda; rights groups are up in arms showing deep divisions in society; and there were resenting voices even within the military. Hamas might have thought that Israel was at a weak moment internally, which provides an opportunity for it to launch an unprecedented attack from Gaza and trigger more resistance violence in the occupied West Bank.

Geopolitical angle

Lastly, it is unlikely to be a coincidence that the Hamas attack came when Israel and Saudi Arabia are in an advanced stage of normalisation talks. Recently, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in an interview that both countries were making progress every day. If Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two holiest mosques of Islam and arguably the most influential Arab country, normalises ties with Israel (a deal which is being pursued actively by the Biden administration), it would not only reset West Asian geopolitical dynamics but also put Hamas at a further disadvantageous position. Such a realignment is also not in the interests of Iran (which backs the Islamic Jihad and Hamas) and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has its own problems with Israel. Iran and Hezbollah were quick to welcome the Hamas operation, describing it as “heroic”. As Gaza is set to witness massive Israeli retaliation in the coming days, if not weeks, the prospects for an immediate normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be further complicated.