Israelis were holding vigils and sombre ceremonies on Monday to mark a year since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, the deadliest in the country’s history, which sparked the war in Gaza and scarred Israelis indelibly. The surprise cross-border attack, which caught Israel unprepared on a major Jewish holiday, shattered Israelis’ sense of security and shook their faith in their leaders and their military.
Its aftershocks still ripple one year later. The war in Gaza rages on, Israel is fighting a new war against Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel on October 8, and an escalating conflict with Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah, threatens to drag the region into a far more dangerous conflagration. In Gaza, which is still buckling under the weight of the ongoing war, no formal commemorative event is planned. The massive destruction and displacement are a constant reminder of the retaliatory Israeli assault on the territory, which has no end in sight.
Hundreds gather at Nova music festival site to remember Oct 7 victims
Re'im (Israel) Hundreds of families and friends of people killed at the Nova music festival gathered Monday at the site of the attack, where nearly 400 were gunned down during Hamas' October 7 assault. Families gathered around photos of their loved ones, which were arranged in a semicircle around what was the DJ stage. Many lit candles and added mementoes or photos, crying and embracing. Overhead, army helicopters circled and constant booms echoed across the area, causing many to flinch.
“We can't understand how a year has passed,” said Shimon Busika, whose son, Yarden, 25, was killed at the festival. “It's the most natural place to be, to be here for this moment of silence,” he said.
Busika said it took them a long time, piecing together testimony from other survivors, to understand what happened in Yarden's last moments. They now know he was killed around 9:20 near a yellow container at the festival where many others were killed, and they will hold a second minute of silence there at the moment he was killed.
The last sounds of the trance track that was playing at the Nova site on October 7 one year ago stopped abruptly, as hundreds of family members and friends of the more than 300 victims stood in a moment of silence. One woman's piercing wail broke the silence as booms echoed from the fighting in Gaza, just a few kilometres (miles) away.
Israel is yet to rescue its citizens from Hamas captivity
Hamas' attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged some 250 into Gaza as hostages, continues to cast a shadow over daily life in Israel. Dozens of hostages remain in captivity, with no end in sight to their struggle. Border communities have been upended and tens of thousands were displaced. Soldiers are being killed in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel faces ongoing international criticism over its wartime conduct, with two world courts examining its actions.
Massive death toll in Gaza
The war in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the territory's 2.3 million population and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has led to widespread hunger. It has also left the tiny coastal enclave ravaged beyond recognition as US-led cease-fire efforts have repeatedly sputtered. The United Nations, on several occasions, asked the Israeli side to refrain from targetting the civilian regions and often termed the Israeli Defence Forces' action in Gaza a "genocide".
Israel has shifted its focus
However, the focus of the war has increasingly shifted north to Lebanon where Israeli forces have been exchanging fire with Hezbollah since the Iranian-backed group launched a barrage of missiles in support of Hamas on October 8. What began as limited daily exchanges have escalated into bombardments of Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut and a ground offensive into border villages meant to stamp out its fighters there and allow tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from their homes in the country's north to return.
Israel's assault, which has killed well over 1,000 people in the past two weeks, has triggered a mass flight from southern Lebanon, where more than 1 million people have been displaced. The attack on Lebanon started last month when thousands of Israeli-orchestrated pagers exploded. Subsequently, other communication devices such as walkie-talkies also exploded in public places. This triggered a mass exodus of Lebanese nationals from their country. Millions of them crossed the Syrian border-- a country which is already facing the burnt of US-led war.
Killing of Hezbollah chief Nasrallah
Israel killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a powerful airstrike in Beirut, dealing a heavy blow to the Iran-backed group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks. The Israeli military said on Saturday it had eliminated Nasrallah in the strike on the group's central command headquarters in Beirut's southern suburbs on Friday. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed, without saying how.
Nasrallah's death is a major blow to both Hezbollah and Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran's network of allied groups in the Arab world. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the killing of Nasrallah as a necessary step toward "changing the balance of power in the region for years to come."
"Nasrallah was not a terrorist, he was the terrorist," Netanyahu said in a statement, warning of challenging days ahead.
Iran attacks Israel: A step that turned into a wider conflict
The escalation has raised fears that the United States and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing Middle East. Iran launched a missile attack on Israel last week in response to its operations in Lebanon and Gaza, where Hezbollah and Hamas militants are Tehran's allies in a so-called Axis of Resistance.
Israel, which says its objective is the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to northern homes, vowed retaliation amid fears that tension would escalate into an all-out regional conflict that could also suck in the United States.
Ceasefire: Old formulas for pursuing Mideast peace no longer work
The international community's response to this bloodiest of wars has been tepid and ineffective. Repeated cease-fire calls have been ignored, and a U.S.-led plan to reinstate the Palestinian Authority in postwar Gaza has been rejected by Israel. It remains unclear who will run the territory in the future or who will pay for a cleanup and reconstruction effort that could take decades.
One thing that seems clear is that old formulas will no longer work. The international community's preferred peace formula – the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel – seems hopelessly unrealistic. Israel's hard-line government opposes Palestinian statehood, says its troops will remain in Gaza for years to come and has further cemented its undeclared annexation of the West Bank. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has been pushed to the brink of irrelevance.
For decades, the United States has acted as the key mediator and power broker in the region – calling for a two-state solution but showing little political will to promote that vision. Instead, it has often turned to conflict management, preventing any side from doing anything too extreme to destabilize the region.
Who will win the war?
This approach went up in smoke on October 7. Since then, the US has responded with a muddled message of criticizing Israel's wartime tactics as too harsh while arming the Israeli military and protecting Israel against diplomatic criticism. The result: The Biden administration has managed to antagonize both Israel and the Arab world while cease-fire efforts repeatedly sputter.
This approach has also alienated the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, complicating Kamala Harris' presidential aspirations. The warring sides appear to have given up on the Biden administration and are waiting for the November 5 US presidential election before deciding their next moves.
Whoever wins the race will almost certainly have to find a new formula and recalibrate decades of American policy if they want to end the war.
(With inputs from agencies)
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