Israel-Palestine Conflict Explained:

History, Causes and Current Situation

Report By Y-Trendz

July 20, 2026 — The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains one of the world's longest-running and most closely watched geopolitical disputes, shaping regional politics, global diplomacy and countless individual lives for more than a century. Understanding today's headlines requires understanding the layered history, competing national narratives, and unresolved questions of land, security and self-determination that continue to drive the conflict forward. This explainer traces that history, examines the core causes of the dispute, and lays out where things stand as of mid-2026.

Origins: Two Peoples, One Land

The roots of the conflict trace back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the rise of Zionism — a movement advocating the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the historic land of Israel/Palestine — coincided with a growing sense of Arab and Palestinian national identity in the same territory, then part of the declining Ottoman Empire. Jewish immigration to the region increased steadily in the decades that followed, driven in part by rising antisemitic persecution in Europe, while Palestinian Arabs, who made up the majority of the population, increasingly viewed this immigration as a threat to their own claims to the land.

Britain took control of the territory after World War I under a League of Nations mandate. In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, expressing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, while also stating that nothing should be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities there — a formulation that many historians argue contained an inherent contradiction from the outset. Tensions between Jewish and Arab communities under British rule escalated repeatedly over the following decades, including a major Arab revolt in the late 1930s.

The horrors of the Holocaust during World War II dramatically intensified international support for a Jewish state, while also accelerating Jewish immigration to Palestine. In 1947, the newly formed United Nations proposed a partition plan dividing the British Mandate territory into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem placed under international administration. Jewish leaders accepted the plan; Arab leaders and neighboring Arab states rejected it, viewing it as an unjust imposition on the Arab majority population.

1948: Israeli Independence and Palestinian Displacement

On May 14, 1948, Jewish leaders declared the establishment of the State of Israel. The following day, armies from neighboring Arab states invaded, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. Israel prevailed, and by the war's end had secured more territory than the UN partition plan had originally allotted. In the course of the fighting, roughly 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Many of these refugees and their descendants remain stateless or living in refugee camps across the region to this day, a central grievance that continues to animate Palestinian politics.

Jordan occupied and later annexed the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, while Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. No independent Palestinian state emerged from the 1948 war, a fact that remains at the heart of the unresolved conflict.

1967: The Six-Day War and Occupation

The next major turning point came in June 1967, when Israel fought a brief but decisive war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In just six days, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. This war fundamentally reshaped the conflict's geography: Israel now controlled all of historic Mandate Palestine, along with additional Egyptian and Syrian territory.

The United Nations Security Council responded with Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict in exchange for peace and recognition from Arab states — the "land for peace" formula that has underpinned most subsequent diplomatic efforts. Israel later returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt as part of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, but has maintained varying degrees of control over the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights in the decades since, with East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights formally annexed by Israel, moves not recognized by most of the international community.

The Rise of the PLO and Decades of Conflict

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, emerged as the dominant vehicle for Palestinian nationalism in the following decades, engaging in both armed struggle and, eventually, diplomacy. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, launched by Egypt and Syria against Israel, further reshaped regional dynamics and ultimately paved the way for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

Lebanon became a major flashpoint in the 1980s, as Israel invaded in 1982 partly to root out PLO fighters based there, contributing to a prolonged and bloody civil conflict in Lebanon and the eventual rise of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which remains a significant force in the conflict today. In the occupied Palestinian territories, frustration over the continued occupation erupted into the First Intifada, a large-scale Palestinian uprising, in 1987.

The Oslo Era and Its Collapse

The early 1990s brought the most significant diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict's history. The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between Israel and the PLO, established mutual recognition and created the Palestinian Authority, granting Palestinians limited self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza, with the stated goal of a final settlement to follow. Hopes for peace were dealt a severe blow, however, by the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist opposed to the accords.

Subsequent negotiations, including the 2000 Camp David Summit, failed to produce a final agreement, and the collapse of talks was followed by the Second Intifada, a much more violent uprising beginning in late 2000 that resulted in thousands of deaths on both sides over several years. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its settlers and military from the Gaza Strip, though it retained control over Gaza's borders, airspace and coastline — a degree of control that has led many international bodies and human rights organizations to continue characterizing Gaza as occupied territory, a characterization Israel disputes.

Hamas, Gaza and Recurring Wars

In 2006, Hamas, an Islamist movement that does not recognize Israel's right to exist and is designated a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, the European Union and others, won Palestinian legislative elections. A violent split with the rival Fatah party followed in 2007, leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, governing parts of the West Bank — a political division between Palestinians that persists today and has significantly complicated efforts toward a unified Palestinian negotiating position.

Israel and Hamas fought several rounds of intense conflict in Gaza over the following years, including major escalations in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2021, alongside a long-standing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza that Israel has said is necessary for security reasons and which critics and human rights groups have described as collective punishment of Gaza's roughly two million residents.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli settlement expansion continued steadily across successive governments, despite this being widely viewed as illegal under international law, a position Israel disputes citing historical and security claims to the territory. Settlement growth, along with related infrastructure, checkpoints and land seizures, has fragmented the West Bank and is seen by many observers as increasingly foreclosing the territorial viability of a future Palestinian state, a central concern underpinning the internationally favored "two-state solution."

October 7 and the Gaza War

The most devastating escalation in the conflict's modern history began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and allied militants launched a large-scale attack from Gaza into southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 people hostage back into Gaza. It was the deadliest single day for Jewish people since the Holocaust and triggered an immediate and massive Israeli military response.

Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza, aimed at dismantling Hamas and recovering the hostages, became one of the deadliest and most destructive conflicts in the region's recent history. Palestinian health authorities have reported tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza over the course of the war, the substantial majority of them reportedly civilians, alongside catastrophic humanitarian conditions. A UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that four of the five acts defined as genocide under the Genocide Convention had been committed in Gaza since October 7, a finding Israel has strongly rejected, and a related case accusing Israel of genocide continues to be reviewed by the International Court of Justice. Rights organizations have also documented allegations of war crimes by both Israeli forces and Hamas.

Where Things Stand in Mid-2026

By 2026, the conflict had entered a fragile and contested new phase. Following extensive US-brokered negotiations, a ceasefire and hostage-release framework took effect in the region in late 2025, alongside a broader peace plan involving the return of all remaining hostages, Israeli troop withdrawals to designated lines, and the transfer of governance responsibilities in Gaza toward transitional, internationally supervised structures. As part of this process, Hamas formally announced the resignation of its civil administration in Gaza on July 6, 2026, a significant symbolic step in the plan's implementation. Under the arrangement, Israel has freed roughly two thousand Palestinian prisoners and pulled back its forces to a predetermined line, though it continues to control roughly half of the Gaza Strip's territory.

Despite the ceasefire framework, violence has continued on the ground. Palestinian health officials and UN agencies have continued to report Israeli strikes and casualties in Gaza on a near-daily basis in mid-2026, including strikes that have killed children, alongside continued expansion of what Israeli forces term a "Yellow Zone" inside Gaza. The United Nations' peace-implementation body has identified Hamas's refusal to decommission its weapons as the principal remaining obstacle to fully implementing the plan, while Hamas has said it views continued Israeli military activity and aid restrictions as breaches of Israel's own ceasefire commitments. Humanitarian conditions in Gaza remain dire, with around 90% of civilian infrastructure reported destroyed and a UN humanitarian funding appeal for the territory only about a quarter funded as of mid-2026, even as reconstruction pledges from international donors have reportedly reached roughly $17 billion against much larger estimated recovery needs.

In the West Bank, tensions have simultaneously intensified. The UN's humanitarian coordination office recorded more than 1,200 settler-related incidents causing casualties or property damage across the West Bank in 2026 alone, an average of roughly six per day, spanning demolitions, land seizures and violence connected to Israeli outposts. Israeli forces have also continued targeted raids and arrest operations across Palestinian population centers in the territory.

The broader regional picture has grown more complicated still, with Israel's 2026 ground invasion of Lebanon against Hezbollah and the escalating US-Iran conflict, both erupting in parallel with continued instability in Gaza and the West Bank, illustrating how deeply intertwined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become with wider regional power struggles involving Iran and its allied groups across the Middle East.

The Core Unresolved Questions

Beneath the day-to-day violence, several fundamental disputes remain unresolved and continue to drive the conflict: the political status and future governance of Gaza and the West Bank; the fate of Palestinian refugees and their descendants; the final status of Jerusalem, claimed by both sides as a capital and home to sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity; the future of Israeli settlements in the West Bank; and fundamental questions of security, sovereignty and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians.

International consensus, reflected in numerous UN resolutions, has long favored a two-state solution — an independent Palestinian state existing alongside Israel — though implementation has repeatedly stalled amid mutual distrust, political fragmentation on both sides, and disagreement over borders, security arrangements and the status of Jerusalem. Whether the 2025-26 ceasefire framework ultimately produces durable political progress toward that goal, or instead becomes another chapter in a long history of interrupted peace efforts, remains one of the central open questions shaping the region's future.