The world is reacting to yet another war in the Middle East, this time between Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian militant group which controls the Gaza Strip.

The fighting began Saturday when Hamas launched an unprecedented and coordinated attack on Israel, killing hundreds of people, including many women and children.

And at least nine Americans, according to the U.S. State Department.

Israel retaliated and formally declared war on Sunday, a sign of greater fighting and a possible ground assault into Gaza.

Already, more than 1500 people have been killed and thousands wounded on both sides.

Dr. Robert Farley teaches at the University of Kentucky Paterson School of Diplomacy.

He says the conflict could escalate in the coming days.

In the next few days, we're going to continue to see Israel mobilize militarily.

So much of the Israeli military is based on a reserve system.

Everybody is a conscript.

Everybody has served and has training.

And Israel is already mobilizing those forces.

And I mean, the Israelis are essentially bound to hit back against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Right now, that's taking the the form of airstrikes against Gaza.

But most people seem to think and we don't know for sure yet, but most people seem to think that we are going to see a direct ground invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli military forces.

And that's going to get really, really ugly, really, really fast.

There's going to be building to building, fighting.

There's going to be a lot of destruction of civilian areas, of extremely dense urban areas.

And I don't think anybody at this point knows how far the Israelis intend to go in terms of sort of disciplining Gaza and reestablishing control of the Gaza Strip.

Kentucky has, especially parts of Kentucky, have a very longstanding Jewish population.

You know, the synagogues and temples within Lexington and Louisville.

Right.

These are part of the community and they care deeply about what's going on in Israel.

The connections between Israel and these communities are tight.

Kentucky also has a Palestinian community.

A Palestinian Christian community is a smaller Palestinian Muslim community that care a lot about what is happening in Israel Palestine.

And that matters for sort of how we think about it here in Kentucky.

You know, the federal government is very involved in this already, that we're sending an aircraft carrier to the region.

And so the Biden administration thinks that this is a significant national interest of the opposition, agrees.

Republicans agree that it's a significant national interest.

And so, yeah, I mean, I think there's a there's a situation here where, you know, we in Kentucky, we know people who have people who are part of this conflict.

They're part of the communities that we live in.

And that's the reason we should care about it.