Israel-Gaza War: A Highschooler’s Perspective

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Israel and Gaza Strip map (Britannica)

Israel attacks Gaza City and as the assault on the city displaces camps and homes, the army has gained control of 40% of the city. “The director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 30 percent of Palestinians killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza have been children, amounting to 28 children killed each day since October 2023” (Kestler-D'Amours and Najjar). Israel is not going to stop, until all of the Israel captives get released, and Hamas ends its rule entirely. Since this morning, over 75 Palestinians have died and around 44 have died because of Israel's attacks. 

Image from (aljazeera)

The Israeli military has been pressing an attack on Gaza City. Gaza’s largest urban area is where Hamas has a stronghold. Israel has been attacking using both air and ground weapons on the city. The United Nation, or UN has told all civilians to evacuate, and around 200,000 have done so. There are around 1 million more left though. Since last month, up to 75% of Gaza has been taken by Israel. A lot of Israel's reserve forces are being called up into this stage of the war, and they are from all over Israel. The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced that after Hamas broke a ceasefire, and hostage release deal, Israel would conquer all of Gaza. "We will not stop the war until we defeat this enemy" (Gritten). One of the hospitals in Gaza City is Al-Shifa, and they have reported many dead and wounded Palestinians since Israel's attacks on Tuesday (September 2, 2025). "We can't deal with any more cases due to high pressure on us and lack of supplies. The CT [scanner] is now broken down, so we are working blindly," one doctor said. "The current situation is catastrophic" (Gritten). “The UN has said the famine is a "man-made disaster" and said Israel is obliged under international humanitarian law to ensure food and medical supplies for Gaza's population” (Gritten). In response to this, Israel has said that “there are no restrictions on aid deliveries and has disputed the health ministry's figures on malnutrition-related deaths” (Gritten).

In World War 1 (WWI), the British took over an area known as Palestine. As the UK agreed to establish a “national home” for the Jewish people here, the tensions between the Jews and the Arabs rose. Both the Jews and the Arabs had ties to the land, and the Palestinian didn’t want to move. In 1947 the United Nations (UN), voted for Palestine to be split, and both the Arabs and Jews get their own ‘state.’ In 1984, the British withdrew, and left the problem of the Arab and Jewish feud to the UN. The Jewish declared independence, in a ‘state’ called Israel, and the following year, the UN recognized Israel as an independent place. The Arabs attacked Israel the day after it gained its independence, and in 1949, when the fighting ended, Israel controlled most of the land. 

Hamas or the “Islamic Resistance Movement,” was a group that was founded in 1987, as a sub-group of the Palestine Muslim Brotherhood (“HAMAS | New Jersey OHSP”). The main objective of Hamas was to completely destroy Israel, and replace it with their own Palestine Islamic state. “Since 2007, HAMAS has served as the governing authority of the Gaza Strip, a small territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea that borders Israel. HAMAS has historically targeted Israel through terrorist and rocket attacks, largely emanating from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank” (“HAMAS | New Jersey OHSP”). The West Bank is an area west of the Jordan River that the British used to own, and then Israel occupied it in 1967. “Within its present boundaries, the West Bank represents the portion of the former mandate retained in 1948 by the Arab forces that entered Palestine after the departure of the British” (Britannica and The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica).

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Works Cited

Britannica, and The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “West Bank.” Britannica, 4 September 2025, https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Bank. Accessed 4 September 2025.

British Broadcasting Corporation. “Israel and the Palestinians: History of the conflict explained.” BBC, 8 August 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgr71z0jp4o. Accessed 4 September 2025.

Gritten, David. “Thousands of Israeli reservists report for duty ahead of Gaza City offensive.” BBC, 2 September 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvnv5lv4zpo. Accessed 3 September 2025.

“HAMAS | New Jersey OHSP.” New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, https://www.njohsp.gov/threat-landscape/foreign-terrorist-organizations/hamas. Accessed 4 September 2025.

Kestler-D'Amours, Jillian, and Farah Najjar. “LIVE: Conditions in Gaza City under Israeli attack ‘unthinkable’, says UN.” Aljazeera, 4 September 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/9/4/live-hamas-says-ready-for-truce-deal-as-israel-pounds-gaza-city-overnight. Accessed 4 September 2025.