The Riverside Press-Enterprise
A LOOK AT THE GAZA STRIP
A surprise attack by Hamas has led to a fierce Israeli response
A ball of fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, Saturday.
ighting in Gaza began after weeks of rising Israeli-palestinian tension in occupied East Jerusalem that culminated in clashes at a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews. On Saturday at least 2,200 rockets were fired into Israeli airspace in the early hours of the assault, said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, Israel’s top military spokesman. Israel’s emergency service, Magen David Adom, said it had received reports of Hamas rockets landing as far north as Tel Aviv. The exact location of many rocket strikes is unknown. It is the worst violence in the area since attacks in 2014.
The Associated Press reports that Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighborhood by neighborhood on Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory as Israel vowed a retaliation for Hamas’ surprise weekend attack that would “reverberate ... for generations.”
The Gaza Strip has been under the de facto governing authority of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, since 2007, and has faced years of conflict, poverty, and humanitarian crises. Inhabited since at least the 15th century B.C. The Gaza Strip area has been dominated by many different peoples and empires throughout its history; it was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in the early 16th century. The Gaza Strip fell to British forces during World War I, becoming a part of the British Mandate of Palestine. Following the 1948 Arab-israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip; Israel captured it in the Six-day War in 1967. Under a series of agreements known as the Oslo Accords signed between 1993 and 1999, Israel transferred to the newly-created Palestinian Authority security and civilian responsibility for many Palestinian-populated areas of the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank.
Who is Hamas?
While its origins are with the Muslim Brotherhood,
Hamas has reportedly been funded, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps since the early 1990s. Hamas even opened an office in Tehran in the 1990s. Despite its longstanding ties with Tehran, the Palestinian terror group has had a rocky relationship with the Islamic Republic in recent years. In 2012, Iran cut off funding to Hamas after it refused to support the al-assad regime in the Syrian Civil War.
Hamas has used Iranian support to launch several wars against Israel from its base in Gaza, including in 2008, 2009, 2014, and 2021. In each of those attacks, thousands of rockets were fired by terror organizations toward Israeli population centers. In total, dozens of civilians have been killed via rocket attacks resulting in dozens of civilian deaths. Hamas has also used Iranian know-how to help build its extensive network of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip and underneath the Israel-gaza border to conceal weapons and kidnap Israeli civilians. Hamas continues to develop itself militarily, for instance, launching a commando navy unit that became operational in recent years.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Iran’s IRGC helped Hamas plan the attacks on Israel and green-lit them in a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon last week.