Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza soon after Hamas took control, while the military wing of the group, known as the Qassam Brigades, fired crude rockets into Israeli territory. In the decade and a half since, violence has flared up periodically between the two sides. While previous military actions involving Israel — such as those with Arab states in 1948, 1967 or 1973 — have been full fledged conflicts, Israeli military tactics were often designed to set back the enemy rather than conclusively defeat it. The same strategic goal has been used in dealing with Hamas. “Against an implacable, well

Gaza, a 140-square-mile strip of coastal land along the border with Egypt, came under Israeli control in 1967 following the Six Day War with Arab states. Though some Israeli settlers moved into the land, among some politicians there was little enthusiasm for control of the land. “I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won’t happen, and a solution must be found,” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was reported to have said in 1992. After the Oslo accords in 1993, most of the strip came under the control of the newly formed Palestinian Authority. But the area saw widespread violence after the second intifada began in 2000 and Israeli forces began building barriers between Gaza and Israel, as well as the border with Egypt. In 2005, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel unilaterally decided to “disengage” from Gaza, removing not only its military force within the area but also upward of 8,000 Israelis who had been living in settlement camps in the area. Hamas, which first emerged during the first intifada in 1987 as the Palestinian wing of Egypt’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement and had used violent tactics against the Israeli occupation, won Palestinian elections in 2006. The move set off a power struggle with Fatah, the long-running political party founded by the late Yasser Arafat, culminating in Hamas seizing control of Gaza in 2007 while Fatah kept control of the West Bank.

The situation in Gaza seemed to be following a familiar pattern this week: Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired rockets into Israel. The Israeli military responded with pounding airstrikes, targeting Hamas leaders but also killing civilians. Deaths and injuries were reported by both sides, but with casualties disproportionally large on the Palestinian side. Hamas appears to have made some significant changes to its tactics in recent years, firing barrages of longer-range rockets at Tel Aviv this week that appeared to briefly overwhelm Iron Dome. The spread of violence to Israeli towns with large Arab