Explained: A look-back at the Israeli invasions of Gaza

Following Hamas's audacious Saturday attack on southern Israel, which sent shockwaves across both Israel and the world, Tel Aviv is assembling thousands of troops for another potentially big confrontation in Gaza with Palestinian armed groups.

Gaza is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, who have been stuck in the tiny enclave after being displaced forcefully by Israel's decades-long occupation policies. More than two-thirds of Gaza's residents are unemployed and about 80 percent of the population live in poverty, making the enclave a breeding ground of resistance against Israel.

The last time the two sides fought a bloody war was in 2021 when Hamas launched rocket attacks into Israel and Tel Aviv hit Gaza with deadly airstrikes during an 11-day period in May. They agreed to a ceasefire after 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, were killed. Hamas's attacks also killed 13 Israelis including two children.

This time, however, in just four days both sides have lost more than one thousand people as experts fear the conflict can expand onto different fronts with possible involvement of Iran and the US, which sent military ships, including an aircraft carrier to the region in a bid to rally support for its key ally, Israel.

Here is an account of the Hamas-Israel conflict raging across Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005:

The 2006 escalations

Both Palestinians and Israelis exchanged rocket and artillery fire in 2006. In early June of that year, Israel escalated tensions by launching its extrajudicial killings of Hamas leaders, attacking both the armed group’s members and civilians alike.

On June 25, in a retaliatory act, Hamas captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit with a cross-border operation, triggering the Israeli army’s first major ground invasion of Gaza after its withdrawal in 2005.

The invasion led to a full-scale war between Palestinian armed groups and Israel, which first entered southern Gaza and later, northern Gaza. "It's a crazy scene – everyone is shooting at everyone. Soldiers are coming out of the trees, from the rooftops. The residents don't know if they should leave their homes or hide," said a resident of Beit Lahiya, a town in northern Gaza.

During Israeli operations, human rights groups, including an Israeli one, accused Tel Aviv of using Palestinians as human shields. More than 400 civilians were killed by Israeli attacks; six Israelis died during confrontations.

In late November, both sides agreed to a fragile ceasefire.

The Gaza War (2008-09)

Between the end of major escalations in 2006 and 2008, which marked the beginning of a full-scale Israeli-Palestinian war, there was a major political development regarding the fate of the Gaza Strip.

After Hamas’s legislative victory in 2006, the Mahmoud Abbas-led Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) denied Hamas coming to power, escalating political tensions between the two groups. In 2007, Hamas, believing its political rights were gravely violated, took over Gaza from Fatah, the leading organisation in the PLO.

Since then, Gaza has been under Hamas, which has strongly defended armed resistance against Israel. That position has long worried Tel Aviv which launched another huge ground invasion against Gaza in 2009.

In late December 2008, like today, first, Israeli air strikes began against both Hamas’s security and political structures, aiming at civilian administrative institutions, which have been considered illegal under international law.

On January 3, the Israeli ground invasion began in the densely populated areas of Gaza. But against stiff Palestinian resistance and under strong international criticism of civilian casualties, the Israeli political establishment decided not to go further and deeper into Gaza, eventually declaring a unilateral ceasefire.

On January 21, the Israeli army completely pulled out from the Gaza Strip. The 2008 war led to more than 1,500 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths.

The 2014 Gaza War

The seven-week conflict was one of the deadliest between Palestinians and Israelis for decades, resulting in thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths.

On July 8, the Israeli Operation Protective Edge, another ground invasion, began against Gaza. Israelis claimed that the operation aimed to stop Hamas rockets, which were retaliatory acts to Israel’s crackdown on the group’s members in the occupied West Bank, according to the armed organisation.

On July 17, the Israeli operation evolved into a ground invasion, which the state claimed was to destroy Hamas’s tunnel system in Gaza. However, according to various sources, the operation aimed to kill as many Palestinians to bring an end to their resistance capabilities in Gaza.

The impact of Israel’s targeting of Palestinian civilians was far more visible in Shujaiyya, a city with 90,000 people in 6 square kilometres than in any other place. The town’s population strongly supported Hamas, and as a result, it became a target of the Israeli army’s indiscriminate attacks.

While Hamas has no tanks at its disposal, its fighters put up fierce resistance against the Israeli army in the Battle of Shujaiyya. Israel had more than 2,000 tanks in its military inventory. Hamas's effective military tactics conducted with utmost tenacity and strategic use of tunnels marked one of the turning points of the Palestinian resistance.

Angered by the Palestinian resistance in the town, Israelis resorted to brutal aerial bombardment reinforced by artillery fire against Palestinians, targeting civilians. At the time, Max Blumenthal, an American journalist, reported that under heavy Israeli bombing, the town’s people were forced to “jump from fourth-floor windows as their homes burst into flames.”

“Others rushed out in their night clothes, nearly nude, prompting him (Tamer Atash, a Palestinian witness of events) and other men to hand over their shirts and even their trousers to women scurrying half-exposed through the darkened streets,” the reporter wrote.

Israeli strikes flattened apartments as its ground troops reportedly executed many civilians across the town. John Kerry, the US Secretary of State at the time, described Israeli attacks as "a hell of a pinpoint operation”. To control the Palestinian town, Israel used 11 artillery battalions, which amounts to what the US military deploys for two divisions. The UN described the Israeli conduct in Shujaiyya as a possible “war crime”.

On August 5, Israeli ground forces withdrew from Gaza. In late August, a ceasefire was declared.

The 2014 Israeli invasion killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, wounding more than 10,000. The operation’s cost over the lives of Palestinian children was overwhelming. At least 3,374 children were wounded as the war left more than 1,000 Palestinian children permanently disabled. More than 7,000 Gazan homes were razed to the ground.

During the war, 67 soldiers and 5 civilians of Israel were killed.

2021 Hamas-Israel fighting

Like ongoing tensions, back in 2021, Tel Aviv assembled thousands of soldiers to fight Hamas, which sent rockets into Israel proper after the illegal eviction of Sheikh Jarrah's native Palestinian residents from their homes in East Jerusalem and the deployment of a large police force in Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

While Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes, which destroyed hundreds of Palestinian homes, killing hundreds of civilians including children, its army avoided launching a ground offensive against Gaza, calculating it could be very costly for Tel Aviv. At least 72,000 Palestinians were displaced due to Israeli attacks.

But Hamas, which sent thousands of rockets towards Israel, fiercely fought, targeting the capital and leading to cancellations of flights to and from Tel Aviv. “The enemy carries out show raids aimed at sabotage and destruction. It will not affect the capabilities of the resistance,” said a Hamas spokesman at the time.

During the 11-day fighting, Palestinians across the occupied territories and Israeli landscape also stood up to — and not back down from — Tel Aviv's aggression tactics, launching large protests.

Both sides claimed victory at the end of their armed confrontation.