Raid · October 7, 2023 · Southern Israel / Gaza Envelope Theater

Hamas-led armed groups breached the Gaza perimeter and attacked communities, military positions, and the Nova music festival. The UN commission reported more than 1,000 attackers, about 1,200 people killed in Israel, and 251 people abducted to Gaza. Hostages are not included in the event’s death total.

Campaign · October 8 – November 2023 · Northeastern Gaza Theater

Beit Hanoun, in the northeastern corner of Gaza, was one of the first urban centers penetrated during Israel's ground operation. IDF forces pushed through the town using armored engineering units to breach Hamas fortifications and clear buildings. Hamas fighters contested every block, using rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices, and anti-tank missiles from prepared positions. D9 armored bulldozers were used extensively to clear booby-trapped streets and demolish buildings from which snipers operated. The town was substantially devastated. This battle opened the corridor that allowed IDF forces to begin encircling Gaza City from the north.

Campaign · October 8, 2023 – September 2024 · Northern Israel / Southern Lebanon Theater

From the day after October 7, Hezbollah began a sustained campaign of rocket, anti-tank missile, and drone attacks on northern Israel — displacing 60,000–80,000 Israelis from border communities. Israel retaliated with targeted strikes on Hezbollah commanders and infrastructure. The exchange gradually escalated through 2024. In July, Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a targeted strike in Beirut. On September 27, 2024, Israel killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah — the most powerful figure in Lebanon for 32 years — in a massive airstrike on Hezbollah's Beirut headquarters. In October, Israel launched a ground operation into southern Lebanon.

Campaign · October 27 – December 2023 · Northern Gaza Theater

After three weeks of heavy air bombardment, the IDF launched its ground invasion on October 27 with two armored divisions entering northern Gaza. The advance was contested through densely built urban terrain and Hamas's vast tunnel network — 'the Metro' — which ran beneath hospitals, mosques, and residential buildings. The IDF fought for Gaza City block by block, uncovering tunnel shafts, weapons caches, and command infrastructure. By December, Israeli forces had largely cleared northern Gaza and Gaza City, though at significant civilian cost.

Campaign · October 31, 2023 – January 2024 · Northern Gaza Theater

Jabalia, the largest refugee camp in Gaza with 110,000 residents, became one of the most contested battlegrounds of the war. On October 31, an IDF airstrike targeting Hamas commander Ibrahim Biari collapsed several buildings in the camp, killing Biari and an estimated 50–100 others. The resulting images of mass casualties caused international shock. The subsequent ground fight through Jabalia was conducted in some of the most densely built urban terrain on earth. Hamas fighters exploited the camp's labyrinthine alleys and interconnected tunnel network. Israeli forces returned to Jabalia in multiple distinct operations as Hamas re-infiltrated areas declared cleared.

Campaign · December 2023 – April 2024 · Southern Gaza Theater

Khan Younis — Gaza's second-largest city and Yahya Sinwar's hometown — was the next phase of the IDF campaign after clearing northern Gaza. The battle was fought in heavily built-up residential neighborhoods packed with displaced people from the north. Hamas resistance was fierce and the tunnel network extensive. International pressure over civilian casualties intensified as the death toll climbed past 30,000. The IDF declared the main phase of the Khan Younis battle complete in April 2024 but continued clearing operations.

Campaign · May 7, 2024 – October 2024 · Southern Gaza / Rafah Theater

Despite intense US and international pressure to hold off, Israel launched its Rafah operation on May 7. Over 1 million displaced Palestinians had sought shelter in Rafah, creating extreme density and humanitarian risk. The IDF seized the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, cutting off the last major aid entry point. The operation proceeded block by block through the summer. On July 13, a targeted strike killed Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif. On October 17, a random IDF infantry patrol encountered and killed Yahya Sinwar in Rafah's ruins.

Raid · June 8, 2024 · Central Gaza Theater

Israeli forces rescued four hostages in Nuseirat. Gaza health authorities reported roughly 274 Palestinian deaths amid intense fighting and bombardment; the civilian–combatant breakdown and operational details remain disputed. One Israeli officer was killed.

Campaign · September 2024 – Present · West Bank Theater

Israeli forces conducted sustained operations in Jenin, Tulkarm, and other West Bank locations against armed groups. The operations caused deaths, destruction, and large-scale displacement; reported militant, civilian, and Israeli casualty totals vary and should not be presented as a settled “hundreds versus twenty” count.

Raid · September 17–18, 2024 · Lebanon Theater

Explosive devices concealed in pagers and radios used by Hezbollah detonated across Lebanon. At least 37 people were killed and nearly 3,000 were wounded, including Hezbollah members and civilians. The attack severely disrupted personnel and communications but did not literally destroy Hezbollah’s entire secure network.

Political event · January 19 – March 18, 2025 · Gaza Strip Theater

Announced on January 15, 2025 and in force from January 19, the first real ceasefire of the war was structured in three phases. The opening phase traded 33 Israeli hostages — women, civilians, and soldiers held since October 7, 2023 — for roughly 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, and required Israeli forces to pull back from populated areas of the Strip. Aid convoys entered at a scale not seen since the war began, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans walked north to find their neighborhoods gone. The releases were staged as public spectacles by both sides. The phase held for two months and expired on March 18 without agreement on the second, which would have required Israel to end the war outright.

Campaign · March 18, 2025 · Gaza Strip Theater

With phase two negotiations deadlocked, Israel resumed the air campaign on March 18, 2025, in one of the deadliest single days of the entire war. Strikes hit across the Strip without the evacuation windows that had preceded earlier offensives, and the ground operation followed. Aid entry was cut off almost entirely in the weeks that followed — a blockade Israel described as pressure on Hamas to release hostages, and which humanitarian agencies described as collective punishment of a population already living in ruins.

Campaign · May – August 2025 · Southern and central Gaza Theater

Launched in May 2025, Operation Gideon's Chariots was intended to seize and hold territory rather than raid and withdraw — the pattern of the previous eighteen months, in which the IDF had repeatedly cleared areas of Gaza and then returned to fight in them again. It pushed through Khan Younis and the central Strip, displacing populations that had already been displaced five and six times, and compressed most of Gaza's 2 million people into a shrinking coastal strip. Aid restrictions through this period produced the conditions the IPC would formally classify as famine in August.

Campaign · August 20 – October 2, 2025 · Gaza City Theater

Israel mobilized 60,000 reservists to take Gaza City outright and issued evacuation orders covering some 1.2 million people — an instruction to move that a starving population in a territory with nowhere left to go could not meaningfully follow. The offensive ran through the six weeks in which the IPC confirmed famine in Gaza Governorate, and it proceeded against near-universal international objection, including from Israel's own security establishment, much of which argued publicly that the war had passed the point of achievable military objectives.

Political event · October 10, 2025 · Gaza Strip / Sharm el-Sheikh Theater

A twenty-point framework produced a ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025 and was endorsed by Security Council Resolution 2803. It envisaged transitional governance, an international stabilization force, disarmament, withdrawal, and reconstruction. The ceasefire reduced major hostilities but did not stop strikes or deaths, and later phases remained contingent.

Political event · January 15, 2026 · Gaza Strip Theater

After the last hostage remains were reported returned, the framework moved toward governance and security transition. The International Stabilization Force completed a predeployment assessment; that is not the same as an operational deployment inside Gaza.

Political event · July 30 – 31, 2026 · Gaza Strip Theater

Mediators presented a disarmament roadmap under the ceasefire framework. The United Nations reported that Hamas accepted it on July 30–31, 2026, while Israel expressed serious concerns. Implementation remained conditional and fighting-related deaths continued.