The war between Israel and Hamas reaches new levels of brutality each day. Some 1,400 Israelis were killed and 5,400 injured in Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel launched a bombardment and blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing over 8,500 Palestinians and injuring more than 22,000 as of Nov. 1, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

UN Secretary General António Guterres denounced Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel as “appalling” but insisted it did not happen in a vacuum. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Israel accused the UN chief of providing “a justification for terrorism and murder” and called for him to resign.

This clash is now the deadliest and most destructive of the five wars fought between Israel and Hamas since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

That’s right, five wars in 16 years.

What is the deeper story behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? How and when was Israel founded and why do Palestinians call this the Nakba, or catastrophe? What are the Occupied Territories and when did they become occupied? What is Hamas and the Palestinian Authority? What is Zionism? Who are the Jewish settlers? How did the violence begin, and how does it end?

For answers to these and other questions, the Vermont Conversation turned to two experts at Dartmouth College, one Egyptian, the other American-Israeli. They each teach and write widely on these issues and have deep personal experience in the Middle East.

Ezzedine Fishere is a senior lecturer at Dartmouth College, where he has taught courses on Middle East politics and culture since 2016. Fishere previously served as an advisor to Egyptian pro-democracy movements and worked in the Egyptian Foreign Service and the United Nations missions in the Middle East. He directed the Arab-Israeli project at the International Crisis Group, and worked as a counselor to the Egyptian foreign minister. He is a columnist for the Washington Post and a novelist.

Bernard Avishai is a Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth and an Adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University, and formerly taught at MIT and Duke. He is the author of “The Tragedy of Zionism,” “A New Israel,” and other books. He writes regularly on Israeli affairs for the New Yorker, The Nation, and other publications.

“I'm deeply concerned that Israel's actions may create a larger conflagration,” said Avishai. “The radical zealot minorities in each people are like tails wagging the dog… People committing atrocities have kept the moderate center of each people away from each other.”

Fishere said that he wavers between being a realist who sees no end to the conflict and a dreamer who believes that a peaceful solution is within reach. “Bring the parties together around a political solution that number one, gives Israel security so that this doesn't happen again. Number two, gives Palestinians hope so that they have something positive to look to … a Palestinian state that garners support, that becomes a beacon of hope for those people, that allows them equality and dignity.”



“There is nothing unpredictable about this conflict,” said Fishere. “If people are really tired, if people really want to invest in changing it, I think that's the way.”