10 Key Moments in the Israel-Hamas War

A drone view shows displaced Palestinians walking past the rubble as they attempt to return to their homes, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Reuters)
A drone view shows displaced Palestinians walking past the rubble as they attempt to return to their homes, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Reuters)
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10 Key Moments in the Israel-Hamas War

A drone view shows displaced Palestinians walking past the rubble as they attempt to return to their homes, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Reuters)
A drone view shows displaced Palestinians walking past the rubble as they attempt to return to their homes, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Reuters)

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

Before a ceasefire began on Sunday, only the second truce in 15 months of war, Israel's air and ground campaign killed at least 46,899 people, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Following are key moments in the conflict:

At dawn on October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrate Israel, killing civilians in the streets, in their homes and at a desert music festival, and attacking troops in bases.

They seize 251 hostages and take them back to Gaza. Currently 94 are still held there, with three women due for release Sunday. Israel's military says 34 of the 94 hostages are dead.

The Hamas attacks result in the deaths of more than 1,200 people.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to destroy Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union and Israel.

Israel begins bombing and besieging Gaza. On October 13, it calls on civilians in the territory's north to move south.

The vast majority of Gazans have been displaced during the war, according to the UN.

On October 27, Israel begins a ground offensive.

On November 24, a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas begins.

Hamas releases 105 hostages, mostly Israeli but also Thai workers, in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

When the war resumes, Israel expands its actions into southern Gaza.

On February 29, 2024, Israeli forces fire on northern Gaza residents who rush a convoy of food aid trucks, killing 120 and wounding hundreds.

From early March military aircraft from several countries including the United States drop aid over Gaza which the UN says is threatened by famine.

On April 1, seven aid workers from US charity World Central Kitchen are killed in a strike which Israel's military calls a "tragic mistake".

On April 13, Iran pounds Israel with drones and missiles -- its first-ever direct assault on Israel's soil. The strikes are retaliation for a deadly April 1 attack on its Damascus consulate, blamed on Israel.

On July 20, Israel bombards Yemen's port of Hodeidah, after a drone attack on Tel Aviv by Iran-backed Houthi militias who have been targeting shipping since November 2023 in solidarity with Gaza.

At the Israeli-Lebanon border, almost daily exchanges since October 2023 between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah intensify in July.

Israel retaliates with several strikes, including one that kills a top Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr.

On July 31, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh is killed on a visit to Iran. Israel accepts responsibility months later.

On September 17 and 18, hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah explode in an Israeli operation that Lebanese authorities say kills 39 and wounds thousands.

Israel escalates its air campaign in Lebanon and on September 27 kills Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in southern Beirut.

Days later, Israel launches a ground offensive in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah strongholds.

Iran on October 1 fires a barrage of 200 missiles at Israel in response to the killing of Nasrallah and Haniyeh.

On October 16, new Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar, accused by Israel of masterminding the October 7, 2023 attack, is killed in southern Gaza.

On the 26th, Israeli air strikes hit military targets in Iran in response to the October 1 missile attack.

On November 14, a United Nations Special Committee says Israel's warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of "genocide". Israel accuses the UN of bias.

The International Criminal Court on November 21 issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom the Israeli military says it killed in Gaza.

A truce begins on November 27 after two months of open war between Israel and Hezbollah which has left more than 4,000 dead on the Lebanese side since October 2023, according to official Lebanese figures.

The fragile ceasefire is breached several times, with both sides trading blame.

After the ousting of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by opposition factions in December, Israel also conducts hundreds of strikes on Syria's military sites, saying it aims to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of "extremists".

Israel also sends troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

Yemen's Houthis step up missile and drone attacks on Israel which responds with new attacks on Yemen.

On January 19, a long-awaited truce between Israel and Hamas begins, with 33 hostages due to be freed during the first phase in exchange for the release of about 1,900 Palestinians in Israeli custody.

Under the truce mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, thousands of war-weary displaced Palestinians begin returning to their homes through the rubble of the devastated Gaza Strip.



Trump Comeback Restarts Israeli Public Debate on West Bank Annexation

(FILES) US President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel - AFP
(FILES) US President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel - AFP
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Trump Comeback Restarts Israeli Public Debate on West Bank Annexation

(FILES) US President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel - AFP
(FILES) US President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel - AFP

When Donald Trump presented his 2020 plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it included the Israeli annexation of swathes of the occupied West Bank, a controversial aspiration that has been revived by his reelection.

In his previous stint as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for partial annexation of the West Bank, but he relented in 2020 under international pressure and following a deal to normalize relations with the UAE.

With Trump returning to the White House, pro-annexation Israelis are hoping to rekindle the idea.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be "the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria", referring to the biblical name that Israel uses for the West Bank, AFP reported.
The territory was part of the British colony of Mandatory Palestine, from which Israel was carved during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel conquered the territory fin the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has occupied it ever since.

Today, many Jews in Israel consider the West Bank part of their historical homeland and reject the idea of a Palestinian state in the territory, with hundreds of thousands having settled in the territory.

Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and its 200,000 Jewish residents, the West Bank is home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.

Around three million Palestinians live in the West Bank.

- 'Make a decision' -

Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization for the municipal councils of West Bank settlements, insisted the status quo could not continue.

"The State of Israel must make a decision," he said.

Without sovereignty, he added, "no one is responsible for infrastructure, roads, water and electricity."

"We will do everything in our power to apply Israeli sovereignty, at least over Area C," he said, referring to territory under sole Israeli administration that covers 60 percent of the West Bank, including the vast majority of Israeli settlements.

Even before taking office, Trump and his incoming administration have made a number of moves that have raised the hopes of pro-annexation Israelis.

The president-elect nominated the pro-settlement Baptist minister Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel. His nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said this would be "the most pro-Israel administration in American history" and that it would lift US sanctions on settlers.

Eugene Kontorovich of the conservative think thank Misgav Institute pointed out that the Middle East was a very different place to what it was during Trump's first term.

The war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel's hammering of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, all allies of Israel's arch-foe Iran, have transformed the region.

The two-state solution, which would create an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, has been the basis of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations going back decades.

- 'Nightmare scenario' -

Even before Trump won November's US presidential election, NGOs were denouncing what they called a de facto annexation, pointing to a spike in land grabs and an overhaul of the bureaucratic and administrative structures Israel uses to manage the West Bank.

An outright, de jure annexation would be another matter, however.

Israel cannot expropriate private West Bank land at the moment, but "once annexed, Israeli law would allow it. That's a major change", said Aviv Tatarsky, from the Israeli anti-settlement organisation Ir Amim.

He said that in the event that Israel annexes Area C, Palestinians there would likely not be granted residence permits and the accompanying rights.

The permits, which Palestinians in east Jerusalem received, allow people freedom of movement within Israel and the right to use Israeli courts. West Bank Palestinians can resort to the supreme court, but not lower ones.

Tatarsky said that for Palestinians across the West Bank, annexation would constitute "a nightmare scenario".

Over 90 percent of them live in areas A and B, under full or partial control of the Palestinian Authority.

But, Tatarsky pointed out, "their daily needs and routine are indissociable from Area C," the only contiguous portion of the West Bank, where most agricultural lands are and which breaks up areas A and B into hundreds of territorial islets.