Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1509422
9 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 11 OCTOBER 2023 sustained uprising lasting several years. The intifada prompted US and Norwegian mediation that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO. 1996 Lebanon war On April 11, Israel launched a big offensive against the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group, which had embarked on a sustained guerrilla campaign against Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The three- week offensive, dubbed Operation Grapes of Wrath, ended inconclusively. Israel withdrew from Lebanon four years later. On September 28, hardliner and future prime min- ister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, which is also the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque, sparking Pal- estinian protests that quickly turned into a second uprising. Palestinian militant groups carried out a sustained campaign of suicide bombings while the Israeli military responded with a crackdown. 2005 Gaza withdrawal and Palestinian civil war Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. But after Hamas won elections a year later, a civil war in Gaza ensued between the Islamists and the losing Fatah party that ended in 2007 with Hamas taking over the coastal strip. Israel and Egypt imposed border restrictions in response that Israel intensified when Hamas kid- napped an Israeli soldier. 2006 Lebanon war Israel launched an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon after the militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. The 34-day-conflict killed hundreds of Lebanese and dozens of Israelis, and was the first to feature sustained rocket fire on Israel, a tactic Hamas would later replicate. 2008 Gaza war Tension between Hamas and Israel built up with sporadic rocket fire that finally led to an Israeli air and ground assault on Gaza dubbed Operation Cast Lead. Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. The three-week war killed more than 1,000 Palestin- ians and 13 Israelis. 2014 Israel-Gaza war Simmering tension again broke out into war in Ju- ly, with Israel launching an air and ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza after the group fired dozens of rockets into Israel. The war, which lasted a month and a half, killed dozens of Israelis and more than 2,000 Palestinians. 2021 conflict An 11-day conflict erupted after Hamas fired rock- ets at cities and towns across Israel following weeks of tension in and around Jerusalem. The scale and the scope of the barrage caught Israel by surprise and it responded by pounding Gaza with air strikes and artillery. Hamas fired over 3,700 rockets into Israel. The conflict ended when Egypt negotiated a cease- fire, along with the US and Qatar. Palestinian rioters throw stones at Israeli riot police in North Jerusalem village of Hizme, Dec. 21, 1987 Many Israelis believe that the experiment called the disengagement failed (Photo: Roni Shitzer) Bombing of Beirut, July 2006 Fire and smoke rise from a destroyed building as Palestinians carry a victim of an Israeli air strike that targeted Buriej refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008 Infantry soldiers operating on the ground during Operation Protective Edge, July 20, 2014. (IDF Spokesperson's Unit/Flickr) Rockets from Gaza, on the right, are seen in the night sky fired towards southern Israel from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021 A child is carried from rubble after Israel bombed the UNIFIL base in the Lebanese village of Qana in April 1996, killing 100 refugees (Photo: WRP)