How This Israel-Hamas Conflict Is Like Nothing That’s Happened Before

(Bloomberg) -- The long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is filled with bloodshed, dislocation and trauma. Israel’s decision to cut off power to Gaza — and severely limit water and food supplies — threatens a larger humanitarian calamity. The Palestinians use the term Nakba, or disaster, to refer to this period, which produced an estimated 700,000 Palestinian refugees. Israeli and PLO negotiators repeatedly failed to reach a promised permanent agreement that would have presumably established a Palestinian state. Read more: Hamas' Secret Tunnel Network Complicates Israel’s Gaza OffensiveIt’s impossible to know what those trends might mean for today’s conflict as there hasn’t been one like this before.