Welcome to The Explanation from the BBC World Service. I'm Johnny Diamond and this is The Conflict.

Over the next half hour, we're going to look back at how a specific event from the past in the Middle East has shaped this moment

and maybe, just maybe, try to understand what might happen next, past, present and future.

I've worked all across the Middle East for the BBC,

and I'm chatting with a carefully curated panel of journalists, experts and historians

about the conflict in the region.

In its relentless hunt for Hamas leader Yakya Sinwa,

you hear the half-century-old echoes of Israel's cheerily named

Operation Rath of God, its response to the atrocity at the 1972 Munich Olympics. That was launched

after a Palestinian militant group kidnapped and killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Games.

Israel's then Prime Minister, Golda Mer, instructed the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency,

to find and to kill those responsible.

Munich and Israel's long and vengeful response marked the start of the era of hijackings and kidnappings,

gun and bomb attacks across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and farther afield,

as Palestinian militants, supported by a variety of often revolutionary movements and Arab nations,

did battle with Israel to draw attention to their cause. And Israel responded in bloody kind to deter and to take revenge. More than five

decades later, that fight continues. Before we take a rouletal around the past, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's international editor,

can bring us the background. Well, I think to start with, it's still a very, very vivid moment,

and it's vivid because Israel released that quite extraordinary drone video of his final moments before they killed him.

But I think the way that that video has been perceived, I mean, I think that's actually all

important, particularly on the Palestinian side, in the way that they look, not just at his death,

but at his legacy.

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