What is the Gaza war?
October 7, 2023 was the trigger; the catastrophe was what followed. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 74,016 Palestinians killed as of September 26, 2026.
Last updated: October 2026
On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 251 hostage. What followed in Gaza was a war of a scale the enclave had never endured — a catastrophe measured above all in Palestinian lives.
The Gaza War did not begin in a vacuum. Gaza is a narrow coastal territory, about 41 kilometres long, home to more than two million people, most of them descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of Israel. Israel occupied Gaza in 1967, during the Six-Day War. In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza while retaining control of its borders, airspace and coastline. In 2007, after Hamas — an Islamist movement that rejects Israel's existence — won elections and then seized control of Gaza from its rival Fatah, Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the territory, which both governments described as a security measure and which critics described as collective punishment.
Between 2008 and 2021, Gaza and Israel fought a series of wars — in 2008–09, 2012, 2014 and 2021 — each following a similar pattern of rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli airstrikes, each ending in a ceasefire that left the underlying issues unresolved. The broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict over land, statehood, refugees, Jerusalem and security had produced no final settlement since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, and by 2023 a political process toward a two-state solution had long stalled. It was in this context that the war of October 2023 erupted.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas-led militants launched a large-scale attack on southern Israel, breaking through the border fence, overrunning military positions and attacking civilian communities and a music festival. According to Israeli authorities, around 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and about 250 people were taken hostage into Gaza. Hamas and allied groups described the attack as resistance to occupation and blockade; Israel, the United States, the European Union and other governments described it as a terrorist atrocity. The attack was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and it traumatised Israeli society.
Israel responded with a massive military campaign in Gaza, declaring the aims of destroying Hamas's military and governing capabilities and recovering the hostages. An intense aerial bombardment was followed by a ground invasion, and the campaign unfolded in phases: northern Gaza, then Khan Younis in the south, then Rafah on the Egyptian border in 2024. Israeli officials said Hamas embedded its fighters and infrastructure in civilian areas, including in tunnels beneath residential neighbourhoods, hospitals and schools — a claim Hamas denied in part while acknowledging its tunnel network. The campaign drew on the full weight of Israeli air power, artillery and ground forces, with the United States supplying large quantities of munitions.
The war produced one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century. According to the health authorities in Gaza, whose figures have been cited by the United Nations and the World Health Organization, the Palestinian death toll passed 50,000 in the spring of 2025, with women and children making up a large share of the dead. Israel has questioned the breakdown between combatants and civilians in these figures, and has said its forces take measures to limit civilian harm; independent verification inside Gaza has been extremely difficult, as Israel has largely barred foreign journalists from entering independently. The figures are disputed, but the scale of destruction is not: by 2024, UN assessments found that a majority of Gaza's buildings had been damaged or destroyed.
Nearly the entire population of Gaza was displaced at least once, according to UN agencies, many families multiple times, as evacuation orders pushed civilians from one part of the territory to another. Food, water, medicine and fuel were repeatedly scarce; UN agencies and humanitarian organisations warned of famine conditions, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system found that parts of Gaza faced famine. Hospitals were overwhelmed, damaged or shut down, and the delivery of aid was repeatedly disrupted by fighting, by Israeli restrictions and by the breakdown of order inside Gaza. Israel said it facilitated aid deliveries and blamed Hamas for diverting supplies; aid agencies said the quantities allowed in were far below what the population needed.
Diplomacy ran alongside the fighting from the start. A first hostage-and-ceasefire deal in November 2023 produced a week-long pause and the release of more than a hundred hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. A further agreement in January 2025 brought a longer ceasefire and further hostage releases, but it broke down in March 2025 and fighting resumed. Mediators — principally the United States, Egypt and Qatar — continued to work on proposals for a permanent ceasefire, the release of the remaining hostages, and arrangements for Gaza's future governance. Inside Israel, the hostages' families and their supporters held large protests demanding a deal; inside Gaza, civilians had no comparable public space to voice dissent.
The war reverberated across the region and the world. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel exchanged fire for more than a year, a conflict that escalated into a major Israeli campaign in Lebanon in 2024. The Houthis in Yemen attacked shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade. Iran and Israel exchanged direct strikes in 2024, a first in their long shadow war. In Western capitals, the war produced mass protests, campus upheavals and fierce public argument over antisemitism, Islamophobia, free speech and the limits of military force.
The war also became a test of international law. In December 2023, South Africa brought a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide; Israel rejected the charge as baseless and said its campaign targeted Hamas, not Palestinians as a people. The Court ordered Israel to take measures to prevent genocide and to allow humanitarian aid, without ordering a halt to the campaign. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and for Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity; Israel and the United States rejected the Court's jurisdiction, while the warrants were welcomed by others. The legal processes are expected to run for years.
The fundamental questions of the conflict remain unresolved: who will govern Gaza, how its reconstruction will be paid for, whether a Palestinian state will emerge, and how Israelis and Palestinians can live in security. Competing visions — annexation, a two-state solution, a reformed Palestinian Authority, international administration — are debated in every capital. What is certain is that the war of October 2023 changed the Middle East more profoundly than any event since the 1973 war, and that its consequences will shape the region for a generation. Casualty figures, political outcomes and the war's eventual end remain contested and evolving; readers should consult current reporting from multiple sources.
- United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) — situation reports on Gaza.
- World Health Organization — statements on Gaza's health system and casualty figures.
- International Court of Justice — proceedings in South Africa v. Israel (2023–).
- International Criminal Court — arrest warrant decisions (November 2024).
- Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — Gaza food security analyses.