section_path: History/State of Israel/21st century
section_name: 21st century
paragraph_text: 21st century
  
  In late 2000, after a controversial visit by Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the 4.5-year Second Intifada began. Suicide bombings were a recurrent feature. Some commentators contend that the Intifada was pre-planned by Arafat due to the collapse of peace talks. Sharon became prime minister in a 2001 election; he carried out his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and spearheaded the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier, ending the Intifada. Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed.
  
  In 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated the month-long Second Lebanon War. In 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria. In 2008, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed, resulting in the three-week Gaza War. In what Israel described as a response to over a hundred Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began an operation in the Gaza Strip in 2012, lasting eight days. Israel started another operation in Gaza following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas in July 2014. In May 2021, another round of fighting took place in Gaza and Israel, lasting eleven days.
  
  By the 2010s, increasing regional cooperation between Israel and Arab League countries have been established, culminating in the signing of the Abraham Accords. The Israeli security situation shifted from the traditional Arab–Israeli conflict towards the Iran–Israel proxy conflict and direct confrontation with Iran during the Syrian civil war. On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups from Gaza, led by Hamas, launched a series of coordinated attacks on Israel, leading to the start of the Israel–Hamas war. On that day, approximately 1300 Israelis, predominantly civilians, were killed in communities near the Gaza Strip border and during a music festival. Over 200 hostages were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip.
  
  After clearing militants from its territory, Israel launched one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history and invaded Gaza on 27 October with the stated objectives of destroying Hamas and freeing hostages. The fifth war of the Gaza–Israel conflict since 2008, it has been the deadliest for Palestinians in the entire Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the most significant military engagement in the region since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.