The October 7, 2023, attack drew widespread condemnation from around the world, and Hamas was denounced for terrorism against civilians by many, including the governments of many Western countries as well as India, Japan, and South Korea. Some foreign ministries, especially those of several Arab countries as well as Turkey, Russia, and China, refrained from condemning Hamas specifically and instead urged restraint. In the war’s initial stages, U.S. Pres. Joe Biden pledged unequivocal support for Israel, and on October 18 he became the first U.S. president to visit Israel while it was at war.

Concerns were quickly raised over the potential of the war taking on a global consequence, particularly as attacks by Houthi fighters on ships passing through the Red Sea disrupted global shipping and U.S. troops in the region faced attacks that, at times, proved deadly.

As the war led to a deepening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Israel faced significant international pressure to allow limited aid into the territory. Pressure for a ceasefire also intensified as the war dragged on. Some opponents of the war lodged accusations of genocide against Israel as soon as the war moved to the southern half of the Gaza Strip, and in December 2023 South Africa sought an injunction from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to prevent violations of international genocide conventions. The following month the court ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide, including enabling humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip. After humanitarian assistance was further restricted in 2025, leading ultimately to famine, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory—established in 2021 by the United Nations Human Rights Council—issued a report that found reasonable grounds to conclude that Israel had committed four out of the five genocidal acts defined under the international Genocide Convention: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

Amid growing concern over Israel’s conduct and in reaffirming an international commitment to a two-state solution, about 10 countries, including Mexico, Spain, Norway, and Ireland, successively recognized Palestinian statehood before the end of 2024. In July 2025, as Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip continued to ravage the area, France became the first Group of Seven (G7) country to announce its intention to recognize Palestinian statehood in the coming months. The United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, Malta, Australia, and Belgium made similar announcements in the following days and weeks. During the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September, France and Saudi Arabia jointly introduced the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, which called for the “irreversible implementation of the two-State solution,” for Hamas to free all hostages and disarm, and for the United Nations and its member states to provide resources and assistance to support a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On September 12 the General Assembly passed the resolution with 142 countries voting in favor, 10 against, and 12 abstaining.

Meanwhile, the intense emotions surrounding the war led to a wave of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. In the first several weeks of the conflict, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 312 antisemitic incidents in the United States, up from 64 incidents reported in the same period in 2022. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recorded 774 complaints of Islamophobia in the United States during a similar period, up from 63 total reported incidents in August.

The atmosphere at American universities during the war was under particular scrutiny as protests on campuses prompted concerns about students’ safety and freedom of speech. In April 2024, as Columbia University’s president testified before the U.S. Congress about the university’s handling of antisemitism, pro-Palestinian activists at the university erected an encampment on campus calling for the university to divest from Israel (see Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions [BDS]). Students at dozens of other universities followed suit in the weeks ahead, causing significant disruption as graduation season approached, and tensions continued in the following school year and into 2025. Incidents of antisemitism at some of the encampments and confrontations with counterprotesters amplified concerns over safety and security, leading to the dismantlement of many of the encampments and disciplinary measures, including arrest and suspension, for some of the protesting students. Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students and faculty across American campuses also reported being targeted for harassment and subjected to discrimination and censorship. Harvard University, the only major university to conduct parallel investigations on both antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias, found in twin task force reports released in April 2025 that 26 percent of Jewish student respondents and 56 percent of Muslim student respondents felt physically unsafe at the university; 61 percent of Jewish students and faculty and 92 percent of Muslim students and faculty feared repercussions for voicing their opinions.

Background to October 7, 2023

The war was a consequence of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which began in the early 20th century as Jews and Arab Palestinians both sought self-determination on the same area of land. In 1948 the State of Israel was created and hostilities between the two communities that year led to a mass displacement of Palestinians. Many of them became refugees in the Gaza Strip, a narrow swath of land roughly the size of Philadelphia that had come under the control of Egyptian forces in the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war. The status of the Palestinians remained unresolved as the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict brought recurrent violence to the region. The fate of the Gaza Strip in particular fell into the hands of Israel when it occupied the territory in the Six-Day War of 1967.

In 1993 there was a glimmer of hope for a peaceful resolution when the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) reached an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state (see two-state solution; Oslo Accords). Hamas, a militant Palestinian group founded in 1987, rejected the plan, which included Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel, and carried out a terror campaign in an attempt to disrupt it. The plan was ultimately derailed amid suicide bombings by Hamas and the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist. After the collapse of the peace process, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, and Hamas, taking political credit for the withdrawal, won elections in 2006. In 2007, after factional conflict with the PLO, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip. The takeover by the militant organization prompted a blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt and set the stage for the next decade and a half of continued unrest.

The first major conflict between Israel and Hamas, which included Israeli air strikes and a ground invasion, took place at the end of 2008. Hostilities broke out several other times, most notably in 2012, 2014, and 2021. Hamas built a network of subterranean tunnels, which were used to sidestep the blockade, to conduct operations, and to hide from Israeli forces. They were difficult to detect or destroy, especially when constructed under urban dwellings in densely populated areas.

Israeli operations weakened Hamas’s military capacity, but they never toppled the group and came at a high human cost for Gaza’s civilians. Hostilities often resulted in ceasefire arrangements that temporarily eased Israel’s blockade and facilitated the transfer of foreign aid into the Gaza Strip, an approach that became associated with Benjamin Netanyahu in his second stint as prime minister (2009–21) and which critics in Israel referred to as “money for quiet.” Many officials in Israel’s defense establishment maintained that Hamas had been effectively deterred by years of conflict and that an occasional flare-up of violence would be manageable. In 2022 as Hamas sat out a violent confrontation between Israel and other Palestinian militants, many foreign affairs analysts believed that a pragmatic relationship appeared to be developing between Hamas and Israel. On October 7, 2023, the error of that assumption became tragically clear, when Hamas launched what it called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Israel was woefully unprepared. At the time, it was facing unprecedented unrest over the Netanyahu government’s attempt to bring the judiciary under legislative oversight, threatening the separation of powers. Thousands of army reservists joined popular strikes. In August 2023 senior military officials warned lawmakers that the readiness of the IDF for war had begun to weaken. All the while, provocations by Hezbollah were raising the risk of conflict along Israel’s northern border.

The polarizing political environment was ultimately blamed for the IDF’s failure to prevent the attacks. In November 2024 the independent Civilian Commission of Inquiry into October 7, which was organized in July 2024 by survivors of the October 7 attack and the families of victims who were either killed or kidnapped, released a report placing broad blame on the Israeli government for effectively bolstering Hamas throughout Netanyahu’s tenure and leaving the IDF ill-prepared for the assault. Although the report named Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Benny Gantz, the IDF, and intelligence agencies among those responsible for the security failure, it especially condemned Netanyahu for undermining coordination between the political and military echelons.

The timing of the attack reflected the shifting dynamic of the region. Hamas was in a strong position relative to that of past years, receiving significant support from Iran since late 2017 and enjoying stability amid a modus vivendi with Israel. Meanwhile, a regional “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran was at the height of its coordination, even as the United States sought to retreat from involvement in the Middle East and “pivot to Asia.” As part of its strategy to offload security concerns to regional actors, the United States was reportedly on the verge of concluding an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. Such a deal was expected to sideline the matter of Palestinian self-determination, which had long been Saudi Arabia’s precondition for normalizing ties with Israel (see Arab Peace Initiative). Many observers believed that disrupting these negotiations was one of the goals of Hamas’s attack.