This Gaza war didn’t come out of nowhere

It took Hamas’s deadly attack today to remind Israel, the United States, and the world that Palestine still matters.

The militant group based in occupied Gaza launched aerial attacks and broke through the heavily secured fence into the State of Israel. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, a historic scale of violence for the country. The Israeli counterattack will inevitably lead to more death and destruction for Palestinians and a tightened occupation.

It comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control. The attack comes amid an ongoing failure to grapple with the dangerous situation for Palestinians in the West Bank where Israel’s extreme-right government over the past year has escalated the already brutal daily pain of occupation.

Instances of Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers antagonizing Palestinians through violence are on the rise, from the pogrom on the city of Huwara to a new tempo of lethal raids on Jenin. Israeli government ministers have been pursuing annexationist policies and sharing raging rhetoric; both incite further violent response from Palestinians and appear at a time when new militant groups have emerged that claim the mantle of the Palestinian cause. The now-regular presence of Israeli Jews praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, have further pressurized the situation. A Hamas commander cited many of these factors in his statement.