Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a large-scale military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, following weeks of escalating rocket fire into Israeli territory and the killing of three Israeli teenagers. The conflict lasted 50 days, involved a ground invasion, and resulted in over 2,000 Palestinian deaths and dozens of Israeli deaths before a ceasefire in late August.
The operation followed the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenage boys hitchhiking in the West Bank, and the subsequent revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem, tensions that had been building for weeks before rocket fire from Gaza intensified sharply. Israel responded with airstrikes across Gaza targeting what it described as Hamas military infrastructure, while Hamas and other militant groups fired thousands of rockets toward Israeli cities, many intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system.
On July 17, Israel launched a ground invasion aimed primarily at destroying a network of tunnels running under the Gaza-Israel border, some large enough to move fighters and weapons in secret raids into Israeli territory. Fighting concentrated heavily in dense urban areas, and the death toll among Palestinian civilians, including many children, drew intense international criticism and UN investigations into potential war crimes by both sides.
A ceasefire took hold in late August after seven weeks of fighting, but it settled nothing permanently; the underlying disputes over blockade, borders, and Hamas's rule of Gaza remained exactly where they had started, seeds of the far larger war that would erupt in the same territory in 2023.