Israel and Gaza: No End in Sight

February 7, 2025 in Israel, Scroll

By Eric Gartman. 

The tenuous hostage-exchange and ceasefire deal in place between Israel and Hamas marks a pause in the longest and bloodiest eruption of violence that began on October 7, 2023, between the two sides. But it is hardly the first outbreak of bloodshed, nor will it likely be the last. Israel previously conducted large-scale operations into Gaza as a result of attacks emanating from the Strip in 2008, 2011, and 2014. Why do these same cycles of violence keep recurring?

What is the reason for the seemingly never-ending war between the Jewish State and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip? Truth be told, it’s not really all that complicated. The origins of the current war and all previous rounds of fighting all stem back to the same root cause: The Palestinian refugees do not accept the partition of the territory they consider to be Palestine, the territory that Jews refer to as Eretz Yisrael.

During the 1948 War, large numbers of Arab civilians fled, or were expelled, from the territory that now comprises the State of Israel. While the exact numbers are disputed, slightly more than half of all Palestinians alive today are the descendants of civilians who fled during the war the Arabs refer to as Al Naqba, “The Catastrophe,” Israel’s War of Independence. Ever since, the refugees have never reconciled themselves to living anywhere other than the homes they lived in prior to 1948. Yet this phenomenon is most potent in Gaza than elsewhere for several reasons.

First, there are a higher percentage of refugees in Gaza than in the other areas they fled to, comprising perhaps 70% of the Strip’s population. Second, they are poorer and live in worse conditions than elsewhere. By contrast, nearly half of the population of Jordan today is comprised of ethnic Palestinians whose forebears arrived as a result of the 1948 War. Yet all of these Palestinians have been granted Jordanian citizenship and lead relatively normal lives. Some of them even serve in the highest levels of the Jordanian government. The Palestinian refugees in the West Bank also live in better conditions than those in Gaza. There are large numbers of Palestinians living in refugee camps in poor conditions in Lebanon and Syria who also don’t accept the Jewish State, but lacking a common border are unable to launch regular attacks in the same way the residents of Gaza can.

For all these reasons, Gaza has been the hotbed of attacks against Israel since the immediate aftermath of the 1948 War, with the explicit goal of driving the Jews out of the territory they consider to be Palestinian. The very first wave of attacks from Gaza into Israel during the 1950’s was referred to by Israel as the “Infiltration problem,” and the attackers at that time were known as Fedayeen. From 1951-56, Israel recorded more than 6,000 illegal border crossings into its territory, with more than 400 citizens killed. Not all these crossings and attacks came from Gaza, but it was clearly the source of the majority of them. Israel went to war with Egypt in 1956 in no small part to the end Infiltration problem, as the Fedayeen were armed by the Egyptian government. The 1956 War successfully cleared the Fedayeen out of Gaza, and Israel’s border with the Strip remained quiet for some time.

But in 1967 Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, bringing the Palestinians under Israeli control, much to their chagrin. Terror attacks started from Gaza again in the early 1970’s, but then-General Ariel Sharon’s aggressive tactics put an end to that round of violence. (Sharon would later be elected Prime Minister of Israel in small part for this successful anti-terror campaign in Gaza.) Gaza was quiet again until the Intifada broke out in 1987, a revolt against Israel’s occupation.

As part of the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel withdrew from most of Gaza, save for the Jewish settlements there, in 1993-94. Yet the newly born Islamist group, Hamas, opposed the Oslo Framework on the grounds that all of Palestine had to be liberated, not only the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hamas introduced suicide bombing attacks during the 1990’s to derail the Oslo Peace Process. The Process came undone in 2000-01 as a result of the Palestinians’ demand that all four million refugees be allowed to return to their former homes in Israel, a demand the Israeli government outright rejected. The United States supported Israel’s rejection of this “Right of Return,” knowing it would be an end to the Jewish character of the state.

Violence reached new heights after the collapse of Oslo, culminating in a frightful round of suicide attacks in Israel from 2002-04. Israel, with Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister, surprised the world by unliterally withdrawing all Jewish civilian and military assets from Gaza in 2005, thinking that it would lead to less friction with the Palestinians. Sharon also constructed a separation barrier throughout the West Bank to prevent terror attacks from there; at first it was highly successful in stopping them. With new fields and greenhouses in hand, it was hoped that the Gazans would turn to state building rather than attacks against Israel. This hope proved in vain. Ever since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, Gaza, now ruled by Hamas, has continued with its stated goal to liberate Palestine by destroying the State of Israel, thus allowing the Palestinians to return to their pre-1948 homes.

Therefore, the pattern of violence that we are witnessing right now is the continuation of a dynamic that has essentially remained unchanged since the War of Independence: The Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, refuse to accept that they cannot return to their former residences in what is now the State of Israel, land the Arabs claim as Palestine, while Israel cannot allow the entry of millions of Arabs into the Jewish State as it would effectively bring an end to its Jewish character. Alas, there is no end in sight.

The current pause of fighting in Gaza, with its split-screen images of Israeli hostages returning home, and armed Hamas combatants celebrating, is emblematic of the challenges ahead. Future phases will depend on negotiations intended to see the release of all hostages, the freeing of an unspecified number of Palestinian inmates, and an IDF pullout from Gaza.

President Donald Trump’s new Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, is looking for more concrete steps and an expansion of the Abraham Accords, the signature foreign policy deal of the first Trump term, to normalize relations between Israel and more Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia. In late January he outlined a four-pronged approach for the region: respect for sovereignty, economic prosperity as a bridge to stability, courageous diplomacy, and reciprocity and accountability.

But the conflict itself will continue until the Palestinians accept that the refugees will not be resettled within the State of Israel. How long that might take, and how it could happen remains a puzzle yet to be solved.

Eric Gartman is the author of Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel (Jewish Publication Society, 2015), and taught about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during the most recent semester of the Samuel Scolnic Adult Institute. He has been an intelligence analyst for the Department of Defense, has lived and studied in Israel, and traveled extensively throughout the Middle East.