Risk of flare-up between Palestinian militants and Israel has been deepening for months, writes Jeremy Bowen.
Israel was taken by surprise by the most ambitious operation Hamas has ever launched from Gaza.
The scale of what's been happening is unprecedented. Hamas breached the wire that separates Gaza from Israel in multiple places in the most serious cross-border attack Israel has faced in more than a generation.
It came a day after the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 that started a major Middle East war. The significance of the date will not have been lost on the Hamas leadership.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is at war and will exact a heavy price from its enemies.
Videos and photos of dead Israelis, civilians as well as soldiers, are all over social media.
Everyone choosing a side between Palestine and Israel, but I'm going to take the mega unpopular stance of fuck both these people. Fuck the fundamentalist followers of Abraham, no matter what branch.
They would visit great violence on you in the name of their god if they had the chance. They are murderously self-righteous.
GB and the allies said, hey we'll put you here in Israel since 2000 years ago the Pharaohs made you slaves. Don't mind the people living here, they'll just move. They did the same thing with India and Pakistan. I wonder how the animosity between these groups started?
If I were Mossad I'd be ashamed right now. How the fuck did they miss this? The FBI missed 12(?) 9/11 hijackers and it was the fuck up of a lifetime. Mossad missed an ENTIRE MILITARY OPERATION. Wtf?
Other videos of armed men from Hamas hauling soldiers and civilians into captivity in Gaza have enraged and alarmed Israelis.
Israelis and Palestinians have been focusing on the West Bank, the territory between Jerusalem and the Jordanian border that Israel has occupied since 1967, where there has been almost continuous confrontation and violence throughout the year.
Armed Palestinians, especially those operating out of the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus, have attacked Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.
Extreme religious nationalists inside Israel's right-wing government have repeated their claim that the occupied territories, in their entirety, are Jewish land.
During the last week, some Jews have prayed inside the Aqsa Mosque compound, the third holiest place for Muslims after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
At the heart of the trouble is the intractable and unresolved century-long conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan.
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"Blindsides" give me a break. You are telling me one of the most intelligence heavy militaries in the world couldn't possibly have seen this coming? Israel let this happen to justify wiping out hamas for good.
I keep popping into these threads just to check, and not one of those "private property is theft you can't own land" people that are so prevalent in the rest of lemmy's threads has brought this up yet. Seemingly, they do in fact think that either israel or palestine can claim "true" ownership of said land, due to this or that reason.
Tangentially related at best I know, I just find that pretty interesting.