What's the Israel-Palestinian conflict about and how did it start?
Hamas have been waging war for 100 days since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group went on the rampage in southern Israel, triggering an Israeli military campaign in which nearly 24,000 Palestinians have been killed.
The war between Israel and Hamas that has raged since October is the latest in a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that has rumbled on for seven decades and destabilised the Middle East.
Since the devastating Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which Israel says about 1,200 people were killed and around 240 taken hostage, Israel has carried out an air and land offensive on the Gaza Strip which it says aims to eradicate Hamas.
WHAT ARE THE ORIGINS OF THE CONFLICT?
The conflict pits Israeli demands for security in what it has long regarded as a hostile Middle East against Palestinians' unmet aspirations for a state of their own.
In 1947, while Palestine was under British mandate rule, the United Nations General Assembly agreed a plan to partition it into Arab and Jewish states and for international rule over Jerusalem. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, giving them 56% of the land. The Arab League rejected the proposal.
Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948, a day before the scheduled end of British rule, establishing a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution and seeking a national home on land to which they cite deep ties dating to antiquity.
Violence had been intensifying between Arabs, who made up about two thirds of the population in the late 1940s, and Jews. A day after Israel was created in 1948, troops from five Arab states attacked.
In the war that followed, some 700,000
