The dramatic and shocking renewal of hostilities in Israel and the Palestinian territories dominated traditional and social media outlets as viewers and readers sought to understand the rapidly moving events. Within hours of the Hamas attacks into Israel from Gaza, The Conversation published analysis by academic researchers.
This was a rolling guide to the articles and audio the network published in the week following the attacks. This page updated from the top, so older references were moved down the page as the week moved on and newer items of content were published. You might find it useful to check in on our Global newsletter from Monday October 9 which includes links to our initial articles. All content remains free to read and to republish.
Friday, October 13
The week ends with Israel on the brink of launching a large-scale ground operation into Gaza, having warned all those in the north of the strip to evacuate to the south within 24 hours. The order was given this morning. This is the final update in this particular digest of Conversation articles. Clearly, the story, and the conflict continues. Click here to read further content from The Conversation on this subject.
This evening, we have published new content via our bureaux in the UK, US and Canada. Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor in Operations Research, at Brock University has been working with Lee-Anne Goodman in Toronto. The position tonight, he writes:
is painful. The daily rocket salvos harm civilians in Israel, while the airstrikes hurt civilians in Gaza. And the Israeli economy bleeds cash every day the fighting continues.
Meanwhile, Israel’s air force has likely done all it can against Hamas. And the mobilized army is far too large for anything short of a Gaza invasion. The government surely feels pressured to “do something.”
An invasion seems imminent. Israel has told civilians in northern Gaza to flee somehow to the south as Israeli forces move in, presumably to give their soldiers clearer fields of fire.
We might still hope a ceasefire will somehow be brokered. But it appears Israel is about to launch a bloody ground campaign.
The position many Palestinians find themselves in, meanwhile, is highlighted by Nina Gren, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Lund University, Sweden, who draws on 20 years of research experience to write this article.
Boaz Dvir, Associate Professor of Journalism at Pennsylvania State University in the US, however, can find a glimmer of hope amid the intense gloom, in this article in which he feels the conflict may be at a turning point. Click here to find out why.
Inevitably the atrocities and attacks we’ve seen in recent days have been accompanied by wave after wave of images, video and commentary on social media. And it seems we may be reaching new levels of automation in the creation of false narratives and evidence. How can we know what to believe? Mitali Mukherjee, Acting director of the Reuters Insitute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford has just published on this subject with our UK team, having been commissioned by the editor Rachael Jolley in London. She writes:
“Several media reports have pointed to a surge of fake posts around the Israel-Hamas conflict on Twitter (now known as X), which has recently made significant changes in how it operates. The Guardian pointed to data from Israeli monitoring firm Cyabra, which covers US election disinformation and tracks bot accounts on Twitter, to demonstrate the levels of fake posts.
"Cyabra claimed that many were coming from fake accounts – using automated bots – which were very active on Twitter, TikTok and other platforms. Cyabra scanned over two million pictures, posts and videos. Out of 162,000 profiles, 25% were fake, it claimed.”
While a lot of attention has inevitably been on the shocking attacks perpetrated against civilians by Hamas gunmen in villages near Gaza and the music festival, the organisation also last weekend fired “several thousand missiles” at a number of targets across Israel, according to reports. That in itself stunned many Israelis, who had grown used to the protection of their “Iron Dome” air defence shield. Some people have been questioning whether it was fit for purpose. But Iain Boyd, Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder remains convinced it works well. It’s just inevitable that if you fire enough, some will get through.
“It is a simple question of numbers. Hamas fired several thousand missiles, and Israel had less than a thousand interceptors in the field ready to counter them. Even if Iron Dome was 100% effective against the incoming threats, the very large number of the Hamas missiles meant some were going to get through.
"The Hamas attacks illustrate very clearly that even the best air defense systems can be overwhelmed if they are overmatched by the number of threats they have to counter.”
Meanwhile, the article by Maha Nassar at the University of Arizona on the history of Gaza is now running in Spanish. And Sergio García Magariño’s piece on Hamas is running in bahasa Indonesia, courtesy of The Conversation Indonesia.
It is 7.22am on Friday, October 13 in London, where I am, and 9.22am in Jersusalem and Gaza. An order has been issued by Israel for residents of Gaza City to evacuate the area and head south. That means about 1.1 million people, half the population of the Gaza Strip, are being told to leave within 24 hours for their “safey and protection”. The order was posted on X. The move comes with Gaza already in a state of chaos, deliveries of food and supplies having been halted since October 10. The supply of goods and utilities into the strip was already closely controlled.
Gazans’ reliance on aid is explained in this newly posted article by Topher L. McDougal, Professor of Economic Development & Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego. It was commissioned and edited by Amy Lieberman in New York. McDougal writes:
“More than 53% of Gaza residents were considered below the poverty line in 2020, and about 77% of Gazan households receive some form of aid from the United Nations and other groups, mostly in the form of cash or food.
"Gaza’s weak economy is caused by a number of complex factors, but the largest is the blockade and the economic and trade isolation it creates.
"For the average Gazan, the blockade has several practical effects, including people’s ability to get food. About 64% of people in Gaza are considered food insecure, meaning they do not have reliable access to sufficient amounts of food.”
As Thursday, October 12 draws to a close in Europe and the Middle East there are a few more new articles to mention. Published in the last hour in Spanish is this consideration of the options for stemming the violence. Sonia Sánchez Díaz, Collaborating Professor in International Relations, the Middle East and Israel, at Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid fears we’re now stuck, with only the US able to prevent a wider escalation. Also in Spanish, Mar Gijón Mendigutía of Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea takes a look back at the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In French, there’s a Q&A with François Dubuisson, Professor of International Law at the Free University of Brussels, regarding various contested legal issues relating to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. And from Australia there’s another hark back to economic aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. But Jamie Cross, Assistant Professor of Econometrics & Statistics at Melbourne Business School thinks it’s unlikely the world is looking at a big oil price hike this time around.
Liam Collins is the Founding Director of the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy West Point. He has just published with The Conversation editor Howard Manly an article that looks beyond the intelligence failure of last weekend, and considers the operational response. This was also found wanting, Collins concludes. In part at least, it was let down by border security, and its rocket protection system, Iron Dome.
“Given that the basic goal of Hamas is ‘destroy the State of Israel,’ Israel could have developed a defense plan that was not reliant on intelligence that is inherently unreliable.”
Read more here.
We’ve has some incisive contributions in French over the past few days, most of which have also been translated into English. Our Montreal bureau published this piece by Julia Grignon, a Professor of International Human Rights at Université Laval in Quebec City. It is in French, but again, also readable via browsers’ translate functions. She is particularly interesting on the legal obligations Israel has for Gaza given it controls the borders and can cut off the supply of basic utilities (as is the case just now).
Another explainer on Hamas has been filed, this time via editors in London. It’s by Veronika Poniscjakova, a Senior Teaching Fellow in Military Education at the University of Portsmouth in England. There’s some background on the relationship with Fatah and the internal Palestinian political dynamic. Poniscjakova writes:
“The PA is led by the Fatah party, which is the dominant faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Fatah is a secular, nationalist party that recognises Israel, whereas Hamas does not.
"Hamas beat Fatah in the legislative election in 2006, the last legislative election that was held in the Palestinian territories. Hamas’s victory in the 2006 election was not recognised by the west, as Hamas is deemed by many in the west as a terrorist group that does not recognise Israel’s right to exist.
"Ultimately, the group took power in Gaza anyway in 2007 while the PA has continued to govern in the West Bank. No election has been called since.”
It’s 11.15am in London, where I am, and 1.15pm in Jerusalem on Thursday, October 12; five days since the Hamas attacks inside Israel that killed hundreds and saw at least 150 hostages taken back into Gaza. Since then, Israeli forces have struck the area from the air and huge numbers of their ground troops are now on the borders of Gaza, and to the north, with Lebanon. Current estimates indicate around 2,500 are dead on both sides, with hundreds of thousands displaced.
I’ll continue to provide updates and summaries here today of content produced by academic experts for The Conversation on the conflict. Andrew Thomas, a lecturer in Middle East Studies at Deakin University in Australia has been considering what political legitimacy is for both sides and why it matters. He believes:
“Last weekend’s attacks will now have a catastrophic effect on the perceived legitimacy of the Palestinian self-determination movement as a whole.
"It will be near impossible for powerful allies of Israel to put meaningful pressure on the government to address the very real political concerns of Gazans in the long term. The success of Palestinian self-determination hinges on international support and Hamas’ actions have set the movement back decades.”
There are a few more updates on our coverage before the close of the day in Europe. The Marie Durrieu article published in French yesterday is now available in English, titled: How Hamas weaponised Palestinians’ despair. She recently conducted research in Gaza. And today’s Simon Mabon Q&A: Israel-Gaza conflict: how could it change the Middle East’s political landscape?, is now in Portugese.
Amy Lieberman, our Politics and Society Editor in New York City, has meanwhile conducted a Q&A with Javed Ali, who researches terrorism, cybersecurity and national security law and policy at the University of Michigan. He provides a broad explainer on how Israeli intelligence operates and its connections to other international agencies. He also addresses speculation regarding possible Iranian involvement in the Hamas attacks.
“I also thought that Iran almost certainly played a role in supporting the operation – although some U.S. officials have so far said they do not have intelligence evidence of that happening.”
And Spanish readers may be interested in this piece published by our Madrid-based team, which considers the degree to which cyber-warfare plays a part in the conflict in the region. It is authored by Marta Beltrán, of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. The Conversation Spain has also translated its “key questions” piece on Hamas into English.
It’s after 6.30pm in London, where I am, and 8.30pm in Jerusalem on Wednesday, October 11. There are a couple of new articles to alert you to. One, by Robert M. Dover, Professor of Intelligence and National Security at the University of Hull in England considers the potential knock on effects of the hostilities between Israel and Hamas for the war in Ukraine. The other, by scholars of energy policy at Rice University in the US, reflects on the oil crisis of 1973, and its roots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That Q&A I mentioned with Simon Mabon, Professor of International Relations at Lancaster University in England considers how the conflict could change the Middle East’s political landscape. The questions were posed by Mike Herd, a Conversation editor based in Brighton, England. Among them he asks if a deal that had been in the works between Israel and Saudi Arabia to see the latter formally recognise the former, is now dead. Prof Mabon writes:
“Saudi Arabia has not publicly condemned the attacks, but has been vocal in its calls for de-escalation, joining a growing chorus of international voices expressing concern at what comes next. In contrast, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has criticised Hamas for the murder of Israeli civilians. But Israel knows it’s a diplomatic game. In the longer term, the shifting political and economic landscape in the Middle East still points to a desire to establish relations with Israel, and to realign regional politics in such a way that Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are broadly on the same side of history.”
The US has had domestic political problems to deal with of late, with the House of Representatives currently seeking a new Speaker. How might the situation in Israel and Gaza be impacted by that? It is a matter our US editors have put to another researcher: Laura Blessing, who is a Senior Fellow at the Government Affairs Institute of Georgetown University in Washington DC. She says:
“Israel has strong support within Congress in general, and certainly among House Republicans and Republican voters. Both of the speaker candidates, Rep. Steve Scalise and Rep. Jim Jordan, have expressed their strong support for Israel. The attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, call attention to the leadership vacuum in the House and place more urgency on the speaker search.”
For more, click here.
One of our US editors, Naomi Schalit, has been putting questions to James Forest, Professor and Director of Security Studies at the School of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass Lowell, specifically on the issue of the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. You can read his responses here. Among them is this:
“It is likely that Hamas leaders have given orders to their units that hostages are not to be harmed, and they are to be moved around and held in various locations in hopes of deterring Israeli military strikes.”
“However, disciplined adherence to such commands is not always the case among terrorist groups – especially in the midst of an active military confrontation. That said, most violent groups recognize that if their hostages are killed, they will lose whatever bargaining chips they had hoped to gain.”
This is a regularly updating digest of academic coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following the wave of attacks by Hamas in recent days and retaliatory action by Israel in Gaza and southern Lebanon. It’s just past midday in London and 2pm in Jerusalem on Wednesday, October 11. In the hours ahead, we expect to publish a trache of content including a Q&A with Simon Mabon, Professor of International Relations at Lancaster University in England who will address issues including whether a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia that had been in the works, is now dead.
Another article I said would arrive on Wednesday is live now – still Tuesday (11.15pm) in London, though 1.15am in Jerusalem and 9.15am in Melbourne. It’s the dispatch via our Paris office, and for now in French only, written by Marie Durrieu of Clermont Auvergne University, who was recently in Gaza.
She writes: “On the ground, from which I have only just returned, we clearly feel within the Palestinian population a growing and multifactorial despair, and latent violence. No one talks about ‘peace’ anymore, but rather ‘end of occupation’ … and young people talk about ‘resistance, by all means’.”
The full piece in French is here, and can of course be read via the translate function on browsers
I mentioned earlier that a piece would come in via Lee-Anne Goodman in Toronto on the hostage situation. It is by Robert Huish, Associate Professor in International Development Studies, at Dalhousie University in Canada and it has now dropped.
Huish writes: “Qatari officials have been attempting to broker a prisoner exchange of 36 Palestinian women and children held by Israel in exchange for the hostages taken by Hamas. Hamas, meantime, has announced that it’s not prepared to discuss a ‘prisoner exchange’ until the end of the conflict.”
Read more here
Meanwhile, another piece in Spanish considers why oil prices have risen in recent days.
And the Maha Nassar article on Gaza is now running in Portugese. As is the Jason Hart article on children in the region.
It’s gone 7.30pm in London (where I am) and 9.30pm in Jerusalem on Tuesday, October 10. Our bureaux in the US are in the middle of their day, though. Working with Matt Williams in New York City, Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona, has published a profile of Gaza, the territory at the heart of the current violence between Israel and Hamas. As well as providing a history of the area, she highlights interesting demographics.
“The Palestinians of Gaza trend young: nearly half the population is under 18. The enclave is also very poor, with a poverty rate that stands at 53%.
"Despite this grim economic picture, education levels are quite high. Over 95% of Gazan children ages 6-12 are in school. The majority of Palestinian students in Gaza graduate from high school, and 57% of students at the prestigious Islamic University of Gaza are female.”
Also published in the last hour is this article in Spanish, via our Madrid-based team: Seis claves para entender a Hamás (Six keys to understanding Hamas).
There’s an interesting angle out of our Johannesburg bureau, commissioned by Thabo Leshilo, the Politics and Society Editor there. The article considers the reaction in South Africa to developments in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. That’s relevant given historic connections between the ANC and the Palestinian liberation movement. We also hear the word “apartheid” regularly deployed by some supporters of the Palestinian cause to describe their situation. The author is Asher Lubotzky, Scholar in Residence at the University of Houston, in the US.
He writes: “The South African government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), characterised the recent events as a ‘devastating escalation’. However, it primarily attributed the situation to Israeli policies.”
But adds: “It also urged Israel to embrace the two-state solution as a means of resolving the conflict. The two-state solution suggests the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
And: "I have been researching the history of the relationship between South Africa and Israel for nearly a decade. My research has found that both the ANC and some pan-Africanist formations once held more complex perspectives on Israel and Zionism.”
While I don’t want to preempt what Wednesday’s piece via Paris will say, it seems inevitable that to some degree it will consider the impact of the conflict on children. That’s a subject also picked up just now, by Jason Hart, Professor of Humanitarianism and Development at the University of Bath in the UK.
He writes: “The indiscriminate launch of rockets into Israel has exposed children there to trauma, injury and death. Meanwhile, countless Palestinian children die in bombardments of the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the killing of Palestinian children is a frequent occurrence that invariably goes unpunished.”
“Yet a 1977 addition to the Geneva conventions (article 77) states that: ‘Children shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected against any form of indecent assault.’
"It goes on to say that the opposing sides should provide children with ‘the care and aid they require’. But there is scant evidence of this care being shown by either Hamas or Israel.”
I’ve been talking to editors across the network today about what’s coming up. Among them is Fabrice Rousselot, Editor-in-Chief of The Conversation France. He described an article that will be published on Wednesday by a scholar was has just returned from Gaza, who will look at the appeal of Hamas to some young Palestinians. What is it that drives them to commit acts of terror? Also coming up later today is a piece on the situation facing Israeli hostages in Gaza, via Politics Editor Lee-Anne Goodman in Toronto.
And I can see our Brazilian colleagues have now made the Parmeter article available in Portuguese.
The Samy Cohen article flagged below has now been translated into English by the French edition of The Conversation. Meanwhile, the Parmeter piece has moved into Spanish, courtesy of our Madrid team.
I mentioned this piece by Ian Parmeter yesterday. He’s now recorded an interview with our regular columnist and podcaster in Australia, Michelle Grattan. It’s about 25 minutes long, but well worth dipping into. Parmeter is a former Australian ambassador to Lebanon, and held a series of diplomatic posts in the region. He’s now a Research Scholar at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University.
His observations include: “The difficulty for Israel is that in cutting off food, electricity and water, you could have after a relatively short time a humanitarian disaster unfolding among civilians in Gaza […] Israel has a difficult problem with its international relations in the sense that the peace process [with Palestine] has effectively stopped working - Israel is seen by many in the West as a country which is not doing enough to try to resolve the peace process.”
He’s also particularly interesting on the role of Hezbollah and Iran, and on what he feels is the real chance Netanyahu could struggle to hang on to power.
It’s now Tuesday morning, 8.45am in London where I am and 10.53am in Jerusalem. Three days have passed since the concerted series of Hamas terror attacks on Israel began. Since then, Israel has mounted retaliatory strikes on Gaza, with the promise of more to come. There are reportedly hundreds dead on both sides, thousands displaced and hostages being held. Academic researchers continue to analyse developments on The Conversation. We will abbreviate, update and link to their work here through the day. Scroll down for summaries of all content published since hostilities began. Remember, all Conversation content is free to read, and to republish.
If you are a reader of French head straight to this Q&A with Samy Cohen, emeritus research director at Sciences Po (CERI), published by our team in Paris. It can, of course, also be read in English through browser translate tools. He’s particularly interesting on the political challenge facing Netanyahu and is pessimistic about the prospect of the hostages being released soon. I’ve pulled out a couple of key quotes:
Netanyahu has said he wants to form a government of national unity; Is it possible? SC: It will be complicated. Former Prime Minister Yaïr Lapid demanded, in return for his possible entry into government, the departure of the ultra-religious. But can Netanyahu do without them? It is possible that they will reach a compromise on this matter. Today, he has donned the costume of a warlord and is showing off his muscles, claiming that he will destroy Hamas …
Is that possible? SC: No.
What will Hamas do with all the hostages it took to Gaza?
SC: Currently, Hamas has no interest in negotiating the release of the hostages. Imagine, simply hypothetically, that the movement obtains the release of all its prisoners who are currently in prison in Israel, and releases the Israeli hostages it is holding. It would then lose a formidable human shield
What Hamas terror seeks to achieve
UK editors have posted an article by Michele Groppi of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He writes:
“In a twisted way, Hamas arguably needs this escalation. In the past weeks, growing numbers of Gazan residents have reportedly been protesting the group’s leadership, accusing it of corruption and failing to improve living conditions. But most importantly, the growing possibility of an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a tremendous blow to Hamas’s credibility within the Islamic world because it would directly contradict its anti-Israel position.
"Hamas can divert Palestinian attention away from its problems and score points in its competition with the rival Palestinian Authority (PA). If Israel attacks, Hamas will silence criticism coming from PA and others in the West Bank, who will never side with Israel, rallying the Palestinian population around its flag.”
Al-Aqsa
The name chosen by Hamas for their attacks against civilians and military forces – Operation Al-Aqsa – references the mosque that has become symbolic of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Al Aqsa is widely recognised as the third holiest site in Islam, but sits of a hill of important significance to Jews, the Temple Mount. Three years ago we published an article on why Al-Aqsa is such a sensitive site and at the heart of tension between numerous groups of various faiths in the city. Editors in Boston, working with the author Ken Chitwood, of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at University of Southern California, have now updated this article. Do check it out.
Translations
Of those articles below, a number have moved into langauges other than English, and, as with all Conversation content, are available for republication free. Our Paris bureau is leading on a translation of the Mayroz article. And thanks to our operations in Spain and Brazil, it is also available in Spanish and Portuguese. The Pilkington article is also running in Spanish.
Initial articles
The first piece we published in the aftermath of the Hamas assaults was this, by Eyal Mayroz, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. He highlighted an apparent intelligence failure on the Israeli side, covered the news as it was breaking, drew parallels with the opening hours of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, pointed to the shocking capture of civilian hostages and warned of the risk of escalation.
There followed two articles from our US bureaux, including this, by Dov Waxman, a Professor of Israel Studies, at the University of California, Los Angeles, which goes into the Yom Kippur comparison and legacy in more detail.
“There are at least three possible outcomes to the war, and they all play in Iran’s favor.”
From Canada, Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, at Brock University has been researching rocket defenses and missile combat for years. “But the intensity of the Hamas attack this time was astounding,” he wrote.
“The barrage wasn’t restricted to border areas. It reached across southern and central Israel, including the suburbs of Tel Aviv.”
He concluded: “While civilians in both Israel and Gaza are already mourning the deaths of hundreds, there is likely more bloodshed to come.”
On Monday, our editors in Melbourne commissioned Ian Parmeter, a researcher at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University. He considered the tactics, strategy and motivation behind the Hamas attacks.
“Significantly, Hamas has named its action "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”. This provides some clues to the primary reason for striking at this time, which emphasises what Hamas sees as Israeli acts of desecration of a holy Islamic site.
“However, an additional motivating factor was likely the increasing tendency of Arab states to make peace agreements with Israel, as evidenced by the 2020 Abraham Accords, involving the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.”
Monday newsletter note
Edited version of the newsletter note by me from Monday, October 9:
A few weeks ago, The Conversation published a three-part podcast series marking the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords which sought to bring peace to the Middle East and deliver a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In it, leading negotiators and intermediaries from that period lamented the lost opportunity, and warned that matters were likely to deteriorate, rather than improve.
That deterioration came at the weekend, in the most rapid and shocking way. The scale, speed and nature of the attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza, across into Israel, were unexpected. The targeting of civilians, killed or taken back into Gaza as hostages, has been a grim hallmark of the attacks.
Here, you will find a series of reaction articles, commissioned by our editors around the world and written by experts on conflict and the Middle East. In the days to come we will of course publish more from across our network and in multiple languages.