Recently a major topic in conversations has been the conflict in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine, but what is it all about?
On October 7, Hamas (a terrorist organization, not Palestine-sanctioned) launched an assault on Israel reportedly killing over 1,400 civilians and taking hostages. Since then Israel has launched an all-out military assault on the Gaza Strip where Hamas is supposedly hiding out. However, this has baffled and disgusted many given the circumstances of the Palestinians there.
The Gaza Strip is home to 2.2 million people, 47.3% of which are under 18. It is one of the most densely populated places in the world and before this month was already facing a humanitarian crisis with a recorded 96% of water being unsafe to drink as of June.
The airstrikes and bombs that Israel is dropping are in heavily populated areas with an approximate minimum of 4,000 people already having died since they began- 1,000 of which are suspected to be adolescents.
In fact, on the 13th Israel dropped flyers out of planes directing the 1.2 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate to the southern half in less than 24 hours on designated “safe routes” which were then reportedly bombed. Most recently there has been talk of sending in troops for a ground invasion.
How could this be happening? Well, in 1917 Britain essentially promised Palestine to the Jewish people and established it as a colony post WWI. A mass Jewish immigration began with hundreds of thousands of Jews moving there. Tensions only heightened between the native Palestinians and the immigrants when the Jewish militias helped quell the Palestinian uprising of 1936-39.
After World War II, the newly created United Nations partitioned Palestine into “roughly equal in size” Palestinian and Jewish states but those didn’t last long as months later the Arab-Israeli war broke out and around 700,000 Palestinians fled to surrounding countries marking the beginning of Israel.
In 1967, the UN designated the Gaza Strip and West Bank as Palestinian territory. This wasn’t respected though as Israelis have encroached heavily on the West Bank area. Many countries have offered aid but it is difficult to send it without severely endangering the lives of the humanitarian workers. Egypt has aid in trucks on standby but is unable to send them as the Rafah crossing (the only secure way into Gaza) is not safe to travel through.*
*This past weekend some aid trucks finally made it to Gaza.
