Originally published 2021-05-13.
Photos: (left) smoke rising over Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip after an Israeli strike at sunrise; (right) Iron Dome interceptors launched against a rocket fired from Gaza toward Ashdod. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.
On 13 May 2021, three days into the worst Israel–Gaza fighting since 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to make Hamas pay a heavy price for the rocket barrages it had launched at Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. By then roughly 1,000 rockets had been fired from Gaza and seven people had been killed in Israel, while Israeli air strikes on the densely populated strip had killed dozens of Palestinians, among them many children.
Israeli troops massed on the border and many feared a ground invasion. It never came. After 11 days, an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire took effect on 21 May. This article explains what was happening at that moment, how the escalation began, and how it ended.
The situation on 13 May 2021
Hamas, the Islamist movement that has controlled Gaza since 2007, and the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad began firing rockets on the evening of 10 May. Israel answered with an intense air campaign against what it described as militant targets, including rocket launchers, commanders, tunnels and several high-rise buildings.
Netanyahu warned in a televised statement that Israel was just getting started: “This is only the beginning.” Casualty figures changed by the hour. Reports at the time put the Palestinian death toll at around 80 to 90, including at least 14 children, though those early numbers rose sharply in the days that followed.
The Israel Defense Forces posted footage from the city of Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv, where a rocket had struck a residential area, causing injuries and serious damage. Search and rescue troops were sent to help.
An hour ago, a Hamas rocket hit a civilian neighbourhood in Petah Tikva, causing injuries & significant damage.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 13, 2021
Troops from our Search & Rescue Brigade are now at the scene providing assistance in the city's time of need. pic.twitter.com/fnbVXOc0E9
(This post is no longer available on X.)
How the escalation began
The spark came from Jerusalem. Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah faced eviction after a long legal battle with Jewish settler organisations, who claimed ownership of the land based on pre-1948 deeds. Protests over the case grew in early May, ahead of an expected Israeli Supreme Court ruling, which was then postponed on 9 May.
Tensions rose further during Ramadan. Israeli police entered the al-Aqsa Mosque compound on 7 May and again on 10 May, firing stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets, while Palestinians threw stones; hundreds were injured. On 10 May Hamas issued an ultimatum demanding Israeli forces withdraw from the compound and from Sheikh Jarrah. When the deadline passed, the rockets started.
Inside Israel, the crisis spilled into mixed Arab-Jewish towns such as Lod, Acre and Ramla, where mobs from both communities attacked people, homes, cars and places of worship. Netanyahu declared a state of emergency in Lod on 11 May.
Rockets and the Iron Dome
Over the 11 days, around 4,360 rockets and mortar shells were fired from Gaza. Several hundred fell short inside Gaza itself or landed in the sea. Israel’s Iron Dome system, which calculates a rocket’s path and only intercepts those heading for populated areas, shot down roughly 90 percent of those it engaged.
Iron Dome did not make Israeli cities safe. Rockets that got through hit homes, schools and cars, and the sheer volume of launches, sometimes more than a hundred in a few minutes, was meant to overwhelm the defences. Families across southern and central Israel spent nights in shelters.
Video from Gaza showed tower blocks collapsing after Israeli strikes. Israel said it warned occupants before hitting buildings it accused Hamas of using. One of them, the al-Jalaa tower, destroyed on 15 May, housed the offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press. The deadliest single strike, on al-Wehda Street in Gaza City on 16 May, killed more than 40 civilians.
Diplomacy and appeals for calm
The United States, the United Kingdom and other governments urged both sides to de-escalate. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said US officials had held upwards of 25 senior-level calls and meetings with Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials and with regional partners, much of it in private. She singled out Egypt and Qatar as countries with significant influence over Hamas. Washington is Israel’s closest ally and also defended its right to self-defence.
Calls for restraint also came from inside Israel. Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef urged Jews not to be drawn into provocations or harm people and property, saying the Torah grants “no license for taking the law into one’s hands.” The wording suggests the appeal was aimed mainly at the street violence in mixed cities rather than at the military campaign in Gaza.
The ceasefire and the human cost
Hamas floated a ceasefire as early as 13 May, but Netanyahu rejected it. On 14 May the Israeli military briefly announced that troops were operating inside Gaza, then retracted the statement. Analysts widely saw it as a feint meant to draw Hamas fighters into tunnels before a heavy bombardment. No ground invasion followed.
Egypt mediated an unconditional ceasefire that took effect at 2 a.m. on 21 May 2021. By then, according to the United Nations, around 260 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza, including 66 children, and about 1,900 wounded. More than 72,000 Gazans had been displaced. In Israel, 13 people were killed, including two children, and hundreds were injured.
Background: earlier wars and the wider conflict
The last time Israel had sent ground forces into Gaza was in 2014. That war lasted from 8 July to 26 August; the ground invasion began on 17 July. According to UN figures, more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians, while 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel died.
The roots of the conflict go back more than seven decades. Roughly 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1947–1949 war that accompanied Israel’s founding, an event Palestinians call the Nakba. Disputes over land, Jerusalem, refugees and security have fuelled repeated rounds of violence since. Some religious nationalist settlers and far-right groups in Israel argue that the land was promised to Jews by God, a view rejected by many other Israelis and by Palestinians.
The May 2021 fighting ended in a truce, not a settlement. None of the underlying issues was resolved, and the region saw far deadlier violence in the years that followed. This report describes events as they stood in May 2021.
Sources: Wikipedia: 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis; Wikipedia: 2014 Gaza War; Wikipedia: Nakba; original quotes as reported by the Daily Mail, 13 May 2021. Photos: AFP/Getty Images.
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