Can this tragedy ever end?

Q&A: No easy solution to long-running feud

- MATT ROPER

THE Israel-Palestine been going on for so long we have grown up hearing of wars, uprisings, attempts to broker peace... and then hopes being dashed again.

Now the situation in the Middle Eastern tinderbox seems worse than ever after Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel.

But why now? What are they fighting about? And why can't they find a way to live peacefully side by side? Here we try to answer the burning questions...

What are Israel and Palestine?

Israel is a Jewish country in the Middle East. Palestine is a set of two separate territories bordering Israel which are ethnically Arab and mostly Muslim the West Bank and Gaza. The borders have been disputed for decades.

How did we get here?

When Britain took control of Palestine after the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War, the land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority.

But tensions grew when the international community gave Britain the task of establishing a "national home" in Palestine for Jewish people. For Jews it was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move.