The Gaza wars before October 7

What happened

Israel left Gaza in 2005. The disengagement began on August 17, all Gaza settlers were out by August 22, and the IDF formally left on September 12, removing every Israeli military installation and 25 settlements, four of them in the West Bank, holding over 8,000 residents. ¹ Hamas took over the territory in 2007. ² From 2005 through 2007, roughly 2,000 rockets fired from Gaza killed four Israeli civilians and wounded 75. ²

Egypt brokered a six-month pause starting June 19, 2008. Hamas was to stop the rocket fire and release the abducted corporal Gilad Shalit, and Israel was to ease the blockade. Each side accused the other of breaking it, and it failed. ²

Cast Lead, December 2008. Israel opened Operation Cast Lead on December 27, 2008 and ran it for 22 days, with Ehud Olmert as prime minister and Ehud Barak as defense minister. ² More than 571 rockets and 205 mortar shells were fired into Israel during the operation. ² On January 6, 2009 rocket fire reached Gadera, putting over 900,000 Israeli civilians in range. ³ Israel acknowledged 1,166 Palestinian dead, of whom it identified 295 as civilians, 709 as terrorists and 162 as unidentified; other counts put the number above 1,400. ² Thirteen Israelis were killed, ten of them soldiers, four of those by friendly fire, and three civilians killed by rockets. ² On January 16 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed a US-Israel memorandum of understanding on preventing arms supply to terrorist groups. ³ Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire on January 18, Hamas agreed to a week-long ceasefire the next day, and Israeli troops were fully out by January 21. ²

Pillar of Defense, November 2012. This one lasted eight days, November 14 to 21, and began from the air rather than the ground. ⁴ The opening Israeli strike killed Ahmed Jabari, the Hamas military chief whom Israeli security sources held responsible for all anti-Israel terror activity out of Gaza over the previous decade, including the Shalit abduction. ⁴ Hamas fired 1,506 rockets. Of those, 800 landed in Israel, Iron Dome intercepted 421, and 152 fell short inside Gaza. ⁴ Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, putting 3.5 million Israelis, close to half the country, under threat. ⁴ Six Israelis were killed and 240 wounded. ⁴ Egypt and the United States brokered the ceasefire that ended it on November 21. ⁴

Protective Edge, July 2014. The longest of the four, 50 days from July 7 to August 26. ⁵ Hamas fired 4,700 missiles, rockets and mortars, and Iron Dome intercepted roughly 600 of them. ⁵ The IDF uncovered and destroyed 32 tunnels and over 60 tunnel shafts. ⁵ Sixty-six Israeli soldiers were killed in the ground operation, along with at least six civilians killed by rockets. ⁵ Israel put total Palestinian deaths at 2,127, identifying 616 as terrorists and 706 as civilians, with 805 still under investigation. ⁵ Humanitarian ceasefires were agreed on July 15, August 1, August 8 and August 19, and each broke down within hours. ⁵ The Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that finally held was announced on August 26 for an indefinite period. ⁵

Guardian of the Walls, May 2021. The trigger here was Jerusalem, not Gaza. Tensions built over Israeli control of access to religious sites during Ramadan and over a pending Supreme Court ruling on evictions of Palestinians from properties in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and clashes intensified between Palestinians and Israeli police at the Temple Mount. ⁶ Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad began firing on May 10, and over 4,300 rockets and missiles were launched at Israeli population centers across 11 days, with Iron Dome intercepting about 90 percent. ⁶ Thirteen people were killed in Israel by that rocket fire, and at least 248 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including many children. ⁶ A ceasefire brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States was announced on May 21. ⁶ Unlike the previous three rounds, this one also triggered violence inside Israeli cities with mixed Jewish and Arab populations. ⁶

Why it still matters

Four rounds, roughly every three or four years, each one ending in a ceasefire rather than a settlement, each followed by rebuilding on both sides. That shape is what the phrase "mowing the grass" describes.

The term comes from a July 2014 paper by Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir at the Begin-Sadat Center, published while Protective Edge was underway. ⁷ Their argument was that Israel faced a protracted and intractable conflict in which the honest goal of military force was attrition: "a long-term strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities." ⁷ Periodic operations, on this view, destroy terror infrastructure, degrade capability, and buy what they called periods of quiet along the border. ⁷

They were arguing against two positions at once, and both deserve their strongest form. The first is that Israel should finish the job and end Hamas rule. Inbar and Shamir answered that this is not available: "The demise of Hamas rule in Gaza is not an attainable military objective. Hamas is well-rooted in Palestinian society." ⁷ The second is that the answer is political rather than military. They called that "totally unrealistic," on the grounds that Hamas and its allies reject diplomatic engagement for ideological reasons. ⁷ The critique they were absorbing, and the one that has followed the phrase ever since, is that a strategy openly premised on temporary quiet guarantees the next round.

Our view: the paper was honest about the tradeoff and wrong about how long the quiet would hold. Inbar and Shamir wrote that important periods of quiet are attainable by military action, and offered that as the explanation for the 2014 offensive. ⁷ Nine years and one more round later, that is a hard sentence to keep making, and the case for containment as a standing policy has not recovered from it.

The words you'll hear

The disengagement. Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, which removed all Israeli military installations and 25 settlements, four in the West Bank, with over 8,000 residents. ¹

Iron Dome. Israel's rocket interception system. It intercepted 421 of the 1,506 rockets fired in 2012, roughly 600 of the 4,700 projectiles fired in 2014, and about 90 percent of the more than 4,300 fired in 2021. ^{4 5 6}

Fajr-5. The Iranian-made rocket that first put Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in range during Pillar of Defense in 2012, bringing 3.5 million Israelis under threat. ⁴

Attack tunnels. The cross-border tunnel network that made Protective Edge a ground war, in which the IDF destroyed 32 tunnels and over 60 tunnel shafts. ⁵

Mowing the grass. Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir's 2014 term for periodic Israeli operations in Gaza aimed at degrading Hamas capability rather than removing it, described by them as a long-term strategy of attrition. ⁷

Sheikh Jarrah. The Jerusalem neighborhood where a pending court ruling on Palestinian evictions was among the tensions that preceded the May 2021 rocket fire. ⁶