The 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis was a violent escalation of tensions between Israel and Palestine which began in May 2021 as the result of the eviction of six Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem by the Israeli Supreme Court. The crisis began with peaceful protests against the evictions, but Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad provoked an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip on 10 May 2021 after firing a barrage of rockets against Israeli civilian targets, leading to heavy civilian casualties as the Israeli Air Force began an air campaign against the terrorist groups that governed Gaza. The escalated tensions in Israel and Palestine led to renewed international debates about Israeli annexations and evictions, the segregation of Jewish and Arab inhabitants of the region, and Israel's use of force against civilians (both protesters and innocents).
Background
Throughout April 2021, tensions escalated between Israel and Palestine due to a series of provocative incidents, starting with an Israeli police raid on Temple Mount on the night of 13 April (the start of Ramadan) to sever the temple's loudspeaker cables ahead of the muezzin's call to prayer, ensuring that President Reuven Rivlin's Memorial Day address would go uninterrupted. On 15 April, a TikTok video of a Palestinian teen slapping a Haredi Jew went viral and led to copycat incidents, in turn leading to the far-right group Lehava holding a "Death to Arabs" march on 22 April. On 23 April, 36 rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, resulting in Israeli retaliatory airstrikes against the Hamas extremist group. While right-wing nationalists in Israel agitated for violence against Palestinians, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' decision to indefinitely postpone the 29 April 2021 elections in the Palestinian Authority, combined with Hamas' escalated rocket attacks against Israel, led to Hamas receiving a groundswell of support.
History
Sheikh Jarrah and al-Aqsa events
Israeli demonstrators watching the fire at the al-Aqsa Mosque
On 6 May 2021, the main catalyst for the crisis occurred in the form of protests against the Israeli Supreme Court's eviction of six Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, which Israel had declared annexed for Jewish settlement. On 7 May, as 70,000 Muslim worshippers attended the final Friday prayers of Ramadan at the al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli police were deployed to the Temple Mount to maintain order and ensure that no worshippers slept over (as was customary among Muslim worshippers). After evening prayers, some Palestinian worshippers, who had already gathered rocks, pelted the Israeli police with hard objects, causing the police to fire stun grenades into the mosque compound. 215 Palestinians were injured in the ensuing clashes, and more clashes occurred on 8 May, the night of Laylat al-Qadr, when Palestinian crowds threw stones, lit fires, and chanted "Strike Tel Aviv" and "Redeem al-Aqsa", phrases apparently supportive of Hamas. Israeli riot police cracked down on the Palestinian rioters, injuring at least 80 people. On 10 May, a group of Jewish extremists set fire to a tree near the al-Aqsa Mosque and quoted Samson's words from Judges 16:28, "O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!"
A Palestinian riot near Ofer Prison in the West Bank
That same evening, Arab rioters in Lod stoned and firebombed Jewish homes, a school, a synagoguge, and a hospital, and an Israeli settler killed one of the rioters and wounded two more. The protests and riots intensified in Arab population centers across Israel, and, on 11 May, the Mayor of Lod warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the country was on the brink of civil war. That same day, Netanyahu declared a state of emergency in Lod, marking the first time since 1966 that Israel invoked emergency powers over an Arab community.
Operation Guardian of the Walls
The bombing of the Hanadi Tower
Meanwhile, Hamas delivered an ultimatum to Israel, calling on the Israeli government to remove all of its military and police from the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah by 6:00 PM on 10 May. The Israeli government ignored this ultimatum, so Hamas fired more than 150 rockets at Israel. Israel retaliated with Operation Guardian of the Walls, which began as an air campaign against Hamas and other Palestinian extremist groups in Gaza. On 11 May, the 13-story Hanadi Tower collapsed after being hit by an Israeli airstrike, and the video of the residential building's collapse went viral on social media. Israel claimed that the building contained offices used by Hamas, and Hamas retaliated by launching 137 rockets at Tel Aviv in five minutes. Over the next several days, the Palestinian extremists launched barrages of rockets at civilian targets in Israel as the Israeli Air Force continued to pummel Gaza, displacing more than 38,000 Palestinians in the process.
The collapse of the al-Jalaa media building
On 15 May, the IDF fired four missiles at the al-Jalaa building in Gaza, which housed al-Jazeera and Associated Press journalists, as well as a number of other offices and apartments. The building was destroyed an hour after Israel warned the building's owner and advised all occupants to evacuate; while Israel claimed that the building housed "Hamas military intelligence", the CEO of Associated Press expressed his shock and horror at the destruction of his and other news organization's bureaus, and warned, "the world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today." On 20 May 2021, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and the ceasefire went into effect on 21 May. However, sporadic violence continued elsewhere as, on the same day that the ceasefire went into effect, Israeli security forces fired stun grenades and rubber bullets at Palestinians attending Friday prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque and hit journalists at the scene with batons, injuring 20 people.
On 16 June, just three days after Netanyahu was ousted from power by Naftali Bennett, the ceasefire fell apart after Hamas launched several incendiary balloons into Israel, resulting in the Israeli Air Force carrying out retaliatory airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.