How This Israel-Hamas Conflict Is Like Nothing That’s Happened Before

The long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is filled with bloodshed, dislocation and trauma. But even by those relative standards, the current conflagration stands out. For one thing, it’s especially brutal. Not since the Holocaust have as many Jews been massacred at one time as were on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants stormed Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage. Before Israel escalated its ground operations in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, its retaliatory strikes, mostly from the air, killed more than 7,700, according to Gazan authorities, and dislocated nearly half the population of 2.3 million, by an estimate of UN officials. Israel’s decision to cut off power to Gaza — and severely limit water and food supplies — threatens a larger humanitarian calamity.

Beyond that, this new chapter has changed the way Israelis see the threat from the Islamist group, and thus the measures they’re prepared to take against it. From the start, Hamas, which the US and European Union designate a terrorist organization, has been dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. For three decades, it’s held to that mission as other Palestinian leaders have committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel while pursuing their own state alongside it. Hamas considers all of the Holy Land — which encompasses what today is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza — a divine Islamic endowment, and pledges in its charter to destroy Israel by any means. After Hamas showed what it’s capable of on Oct. 7, Israelis now say they are determined not just to suppress the group but to dismantle it, a goal that will entail more bloodshed and may not be achievable.