Five years after Operation Protective Edge

A full-scale conflict broke out between Israel and Gaza in the summer of 2014 after Hamas launched a volley of rockets towards southern Israel on July 7 amid a month of tension in the West Bank.

The immediate trigger of the fighting was the death of seven Hamas members in an explosion in a tunnel under the Gaza border. Hamas blamed an Israeli air strike for the blast; the IDF said it happened when Hamas’s own explosives accidentally detonated. Over the following 50 days, thousands of rockets were launched and the IDF responded with air strikes and a partial land invasion. By the time a truce was agreed on August 26, as many as 2,300 people had died, most of them civilians. Thousands more were wounded. There have been occasional flare-ups since the conflict and a permanent ceasefire is still not in place — but the number of rocket launches has dropped drastically. MICHAEL DAVENTRY

Photos from top: evening skies lit up over Sderot by multiple rockets from Gaza; Israeli artillery in action; the funeral of IDF soldier Tal Yifrach, aged 21; a Palestinian teenager looks out over Gaza City during a lull in fighting