This resource guide provides a starting point to understanding and contextualizing the Israel–Gaza Conflict. This conflict has deep history, great complexity, and can be polarizing. Engaging with this material can be intellectually and emotionally challenging, but important. Throughout this guide, we have worked to include materials from a variety of sources and perspectives intended to provide a broad framework for continued engagement in this difficult topic.
A Note on the Terminology Used in this Resource Guide:
- Even the terms used for this current conflict show different framings and understandings for these current events. "Israel–Gaza conflict" centers the conflict in the area and people of Gaza particularly in regard to the flare-up of hostilities on October 7, 2023, but the phrase limits the scope of how this conflict also relates to the larger contexts of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as well as the broader Arab–Israeli conflict within the international context of the Middle East.
- "Israel–Hamas conflict" centers the conflict between the political entities of the Hamas-led government and the modern state of Israel, but it also limits scope by not including non-Hamas Palestinians involved in and affected by the conflict.
- Conversely, "Israeli–Palestinian conflict" is too wide a scope for those who would say the conflict is not between most Israelis and most Palestinians but rather between the government-led forces of Israel and the government-led forces of Hamas. Finally, while the term "Arab–Israeli conflict" sets the scope of the conflict within the larger international context between Israel and various Arab peoples, this lens can sometimes be too wide to focus specifically on the localized conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, more specifically.
- For the purposes of this guide, the main terminology to refer to the recent armed conflict beginning on October 7, 2023, and taking place primarily in the area of Gaza and Israel, is the "Israel–Gaza conflict."
