Timeline | The Arab Israeli conflict, from the 1936 revolt to 2023

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip for a third day in a row and announced a “total” blockade of the already besieged Gaza Strip, including a ban on food and water, after Hamas carried out the biggest attack on the country in decades.

The Israeli army says some 100,000 reserve troops have amassed near the fence with Gaza, with over 3,000 injured and 687 killed in Gaza, 90 injured nad 17 killed in the Occupied West Bank, and 2,243 injured and over 800 killed in Israel.

The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

The Great Palestinian Revolt was a popular nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine against the British administration of the Palestine Mandate, demanding Arab independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases with the stated goal of establishing a “Jewish National Home”. The uprising coincided with a peak in the influx of immigrant Jews, some 60,000 that year – the Jewish population having grown under British auspices from 57,000 to 320,000 in 1935 – and with the growing plight of the rural fellahin rendered landless, who as they moved to metropolitan centres to escape their abject poverty found themselves socially marginalised.

1948 Arab Israeli war

After the State of Israel was sanctioned in what was then British Mandatory Palestine, by the United Nations (1947) war broke out between Palestinians and Jewish militias led by the Haganah, which later became the Israel Defence Forces. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Transjordan (later Jordan) declared war on Israel on May 15, 1948, a day after it declared its independence. The war formally ended almost a year later leaving Israel controlling much of the former British Mandate, Egypt in control of Gaza, Jordan in control of the West Bank, and several hundred thousand Palestinians displaced.

1956 Suez Crisis

After Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalise the Suez Canal, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula on October 29 together with France and Britain, who sought control of the trade passing through the Suze. The attack was brought to a halt under US and Soviet pressure.

1967 Six Day War

In the wake of regional tensions as Israel confronted assaults by Palestinian militants based in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, on June 5, Israel launched pre-emptive attacks on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in response to a build-up of force in the Sinai and the closure of the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping. Israel won a crushing victory by June 10, leaving it in control of Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights as well as more than 1 million Palestinians in the newly occupied territories.

1973 Yom Kippur War

Israel was caught out in a surprise offensive on October 6 by Egypt and Syria on the eastern banks of the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia led an oil boycott in support of the war effort. Israel retained control of the Sinai peninsula, but the war led to negotiations and the signing of the Camp David peace accords in 1979.

1978 invasion of Lebanon

Following attacks by the Palestine Liberation Organisation – which had relocated to Lebanon from Jordan after taking part in a civil war there - Israel invaded southern Lebanon in March. It withdrew in a week after forcing the PLO away from the border.

1982 invasion of Lebanon

Israel invaded Lebanon again after cross-border clashes with the PLO. The invasion led to the siege of Beirut and the exile of the PLO’s leadership to Tunisia. Israel then occupied southern Lebanon for almost two decades.

Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat during the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993

1987 Palestinian Intifada

In what was described as Israel’s biggest intelligence failure since the 1973 war, protests broke out across the West Bank and Gaza that developed into a sustained uprising lasting several years. The intifada prompted US and Norwegian mediation that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO.

1996 Lebanon war

On April 11, Israel launched a big offensive against the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group, which had embarked on a sustained guerrilla campaign against Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The three-week offensive, dubbed Operation Grapes of Wrath, ended inconclusively. Israel withdrew from Lebanon four years later.

On September 28, hardliner and future prime minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, which is also the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque, sparking Palestinian protests that quickly turned into a second uprising. Palestinian militant groups carried out a sustained campaign of suicide bombings while the Israeli military responded with a crackdown.

Protest against land confiscation held at Bil'in, 2011

2005 Gaza withdrawal and Palestinian civil war

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. But after Hamas won elections a year later, a civil war in Gaza ensued between the Islamists and the losing Fatah party that ended in 2007 with Hamas taking over the coastal strip. Israel and Egypt imposed border restrictions in response that Israel intensified when Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

Remains of an Egged bus hit by suicide bomber in the aftermath of the 2011 southern Israel cross-border attacks. Eight people were killed, about 40 were injured

2006 Lebanon war

Israel launched an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon after the militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. The 34-day-conflict killed hundreds of Lebanese and dozens of Israelis, and was the first to feature sustained rocket fire on Israel, a tactic Hamas would later replicate.

2008 Gaza war

Tension between Hamas and Israel built up with sporadic rocket fire that finally led to an Israeli air and ground assault on Gaza dubbed Operation Cast Lead. Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. The three-week war killed more than 1,000 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

Apocalypse now: Smoke and fire from the explosion of an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City in July 2014

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday vowed harsh retribution against Hamas, after a mortar round fired from the Palestinian territory killed an Israeli child

2014 Israel-Gaza war

Simmering tension again broke out into war in July, with Israel launching an air and ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza after the group fired dozens of rockets into Israel. The war, which lasted a month and a half, killed dozens of Israelis and more than 2,000 Palestinians.

2021 conflict

An 11-day conflict erupted after Hamas fired rockets at cities and towns across Israel following weeks of tension in and around Jerusalem. The scale and the scope of the barrage caught Israel by surprise and it responded by pounding Gaza with air strikes and artillery. Hamas fired over 3,700 rockets into Israel.  The conflict ended when Egypt negotiated a ceasefire, along with the US and Qatar.