Under the most right-wing government in its history, Israel has carried out large-scale invasions of Palestinian refugee camps and towns in the West Bank, killing and wounding scores of people. Armed Israeli fighters have burst into Palestinian streets and homes on an almost nightly basis, often picking children out of their beds in the middle of the night to be taken into administrative detention—acts of terror that have gone largely unreported in the Western press.

The state has accelerated its expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank and expanded the construction of illegal settlements. Settlers have waged weekly assaults on Palestinian villages, attacking and in some cases killing Palestinians, setting fire to their homes, and destroying their property, often under the protection of Israeli soldiers. The domestic secret police has facilitated and fomented violence against Palestinian citizens. Senior members of Israel’s government and messianic Jewish extremists have been increasingly aggressive in their provocations in and around the Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem. In the weeks leading to Hamas’s offensive, the state tightened the blockade on Gaza by still further restricting movement in and out.

Tareq Bacouni, a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. (Source)