O 7 de outubro de 2023, Hamas lanzou un ataque a grande escala contra Israel dende a Franxa de Gaza, matando unhas 1.300 persoas e tomando cando menos uns 199 reféns.[13] O 9 de outubro de 2023, Israel declaroulle a guerra a Hamas e impuxo un "bloqueo total" sobre a Franxa de Gaza.[14] O bloqueo foi anunciado polo ministro de Defensa israelí Yoav Gallant, quen declarou: "Non haberá electricidade, nin comida, nin combustible, todo está pechado. Estamos loitando contra animais humanos e actuamos en consecuencia".[15][16]
↑"Gaza Strip". The World Factbook(en inglés). Central Intelligence Agency. 2022-11-09. Arquivado dende o orixinal o 12 de xaneiro de 2021. Consultado o 2022-11-14.
↑ 9,09,19,2"How powerful is Hamas?". The Economist. ISSN0013-0613. Consultado o 2023-10-17. In 2006, a year after Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas won a majority of seats in a Palestinian election and later formed a new unity government with Fatah, its nationalist rival. In June 2007, after a brief civil war, it assumed sole control of Gaza, leaving Fatah to run the Palestinian Authority (pa) in the West Bank. In response Israel and Egypt imposed a suffocating blockade on the coastal strip in 2007, strangling its economy and in effect confining its people in an open-air prison. There have been no elections since. Hamas has run Gaza as an oppressive one-party state, leaving some Palestinians there disenchanted with its leadership. Nevertheless, Palestinians widely consider it more competent than the ailing, corrupt pa.
↑ 10,010,1Tristan Dunning, Hamas, Jihad and Popular Legitimacy: Reinterpreting Resistance in Palestine,Arquivado 2 November 2022 en Wayback Machine. Routledge, 2016 p.212:'Since taking sole control of Gaza in June 2007, Hamas has proven itself to be a remarkably resilient and resourceful government entity. The movement has clearly entrenched itself as the hegemonic power in the coastal enclave to such an extent that the International Crisis Group contends that the power struggle in Gaza is no longer between Hamas and Fatah. Rather the main source of confrontation is between Hamas and other more hardline Islamists and salafists. . . Hamas has been far more successful in an administrative sense than the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, despite having access to only a fraction of the resources.'
↑ 11,011,1Burton, Guy (2012). "Hamas and its Vision of Development". Third World Quarterly33 (3): 525–540. ISSN0143-6597. The joint Hamas-Fatah government did not last long. Within months the two sides were fighting again, eventually leading to a political split of the occupied territory, with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas establishing a virtual one-party state in Gaza