How did the crisis start?
Militants from Gaza fired thousands of rockets towards Israeli towns on October 7, before breaking through the heavily fortified border fence with Israel and sending militants deep into Israeli territory. There, Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli authorities, in what has been described as the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
The attacks were unprecedented in tactics and scale as Israel has not faced its adversaries in street battles on its own territory since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It has also never faced a terror attack of this magnitude that has taken the lives of so many civilians. While militants from Gaza has kidnapped Israelis before, it has never before taken dozens of hostages at once, including children and older people.
