Politicians around the world are pounding war drums in the wake of the grotesque attacks upon Israel on October 7.  But the first casualty in war is truth, as they say, and maybe a better understanding of the different groups in that region, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO, will help us understand what is going on and what may happen next. 

Post 9/11, there has been a tendency within the U.S. to lump various anti-Western groups together as "Islamic terrorists," but the reality is a bit more complicated.  Let's look at some of these groups in more detail, to determine who has been doing what in the region.

Some background on Palestine and Gaza

Palestinian Arabs have occupied the area now known as Israel from the time the Romans kicked out the Jews nearly 2,000 years ago.  Only very small Jewish communities survived until the 1880s when European Jews began emigrating to Palestine.  Jewish numbers increased in the area slowly at first but then more sharply after World War I.  

Palestine had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years.  However, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, Britain took control of the area.  In 1917, Britain issued its Balfour Declaration, encouraging the creation of a Jewish state.  Many Jewish populations within Europe were fleeing the devastation wrought by World War I, and Britain thought that Palestine might be a good place to resettle them.  Additionally, with the passage of more restrictive immigration laws in the U.S. in the 1920s, Jews simply found it easier to settle in Palestine.  

Naturally, tensions arose.  Many fights broke out between Jewish settlers, Palestinian Arabs, and the British government between the two World Wars.  However, after World War II, Britain could no longer afford to manage its overseas empire, and the United Nations agreed to divide Palestine between Jewish and Arab groups.