The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge (Hebrew: מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, romanized: Miv'tza Tzuk Eitan, lit. 'Operation Strong Cliff'), and Battle of the Withered Grain (Arabic: معركة العصف المأكول, romanized: Maʿrakat al-ʿAṣf al-Maʾkūl), was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian territory governed by Hamas since 2007 and occupied by Israel since 1967. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated Operation Brother's Keeper, in which it killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and imprisoned more than 600. Hamas reportedly did not retaliate but resumed rocket attacks on Israel more than two weeks later, following the killing of one of its militants by an Israeli airstrike on 29 June. This escalation triggered a seven-week-long conflict between the two sides, one of the deadliest outbreaks of open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in decades. The war resulted in over two thousand deaths, the vast majority of which were Gazan Palestinian civilians. This includes a total of six Israeli civilians who were killed as a result of the conflict.
The Israeli military operation aimed to stop rocket fire into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Conversely, Hamas' attacks aimed to bring international pressure onto Israel with the strategic goal of forcing the latter to lift the naval and air blockade of the Gaza Strip; among its other goals were to end Israel's attacks on Palestinians, obtain a third party to monitor and guarantee compliance with a ceasefire, release Palestinian political prisoners and overcome its isolation. According to the BBC, Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in retaliation to the rocket attacks by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other Palestinian militant groups.
