Q&A: The history behind Israel's Gaza offensive

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands more wounded since Israel launched a military offensive in late December against the militant Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

Israel says the military action was taken in response to persistent rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, which has been struck by thousands of missiles since 2001.

As international efforts at mediation quicken and the humanitarian situation in Gaza grows grimmer, here’s a quick look at some of the context to the latest chapter in the decades-long conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land:

Where is the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is a 146-square-mile strip of coastal land running along Israel's southwestern flank on the Mediterranean Sea and on the border with Egypt. About 1.5 million Palestinians live there and it is governed by the militant Islamist group Hamas.

What are both sides’ demands?
Israel has three main demands: an end to Palestinian attacks, international supervision of any truce and a halt to Hamas rearming.

In the immediate term, Hamas demands a cessation of Israeli attacks and the opening of vital Gaza-Israel cargo crossings, Gaza's main lifeline.

Why now?
An Egyptian-brokered truce between Hamas and Israel, intended to halt Hamas missiles from being fired into Israel and stop Israeli incursions into Gaza, lapsed on Dec. 19. Almost immediately dozens of rockets were fired into southern Israel and the Israeli military responded with its offensive on Dec. 27.

What's the big picture?
A battle over soil is at the heart of the current conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

The lands that now make up Israel and the Palestinians territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip emerged out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed after World War I.

Although initially run by the British under a League of Nations mandate, the United Nations recommended partitioning what was then called Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.

But Jewish settlers declared the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, prompting the surrounding Arab states to invade. By the end of the brief war, the land that was to have been the Palestinian Arab state was occupied partially by Israel and partially by Egypt and Jordan. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled Israeli-controlled territory and many wound up in refugee camps in the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip.

In the wars that did much to define the region in the ensuring decades, the Gaza Strip passed into Israeli control and, as a result of the Oslo accords, became partly autonomous under the Palestinian National Authority in 1994.

Israel continued to exercise considerable control in the area, however, and Israeli settlements that had been built during the period of military occupation remained.

Successive peace processes started and stalled in the following years. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians met commitments made under a timetable set forth in 2003 meant to lead to a Palestinian state next to Israel. Israel did eventually evacuate its settlements in the Gaza Strip, however, forcibly ejecting Israeli citizens from these settlements in 2005.

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