A year from Oct 7, tens of thousands killed and fears of a 'forever war'

Hopes for peace have been shredded by a spiraling conflict that has brought the Middle East to the edge of all-out war.

One year after Hamas terrorist attack, day of remembrances in Israel

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Oct. 6, 2024, 8:55 AM EDT

In the dark days after the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel and the ensuing military assault on Gaza, some dared hope the carnage could, in some way, become a catalyst for peace.

“Crises can create opportunities,” veteran Israeli peace negotiator Yossi Beilin told NBC News last year. The world had given up on the Israel-Palestinian question, he said, but the horror of Oct. 7 and its aftermath “changed everything,” provoking a worldwide cry that this should never happen again.

“There’s definitely room for hope,” Omar Dajani, a former legal adviser to Palestinian negotiation teams, agreed. “So long as we bear in mind that hope and optimism are different things.”

One year later, those glimmers of hope have been shredded.

Oct. 7 images clockwise from top left: A Hamas rocket attack on Ashkelon, Israel. Civilians flee for safety in Gaza. An Israeli family evacuates in Ashkelon. A Hamas militant stands on an Israeli tank after forces broke through the border.Reuters; Anadolu; AP; Getty file

Israelis remain enraged and deeply shaken, with families of Hamas’ remaining hostages suffering the gut-wrenching anguish of not knowing if their loved ones are even alive. The people of Gaza, meanwhile, have endured an unmitigated humanitarian catastrophe as Israel carries out one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in history. It has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them women and children, and reduced much of the strip to ash and rubble.

In the past three weeks, Israel has turned its attention north, and airstrikes and a ground invasion have killed around 1,800 people in Lebanon and driven 1.2 million from their homes

Now, Israel and Iran teeter on the edge of all-out war.

With the United States and its allies having failed in their attempts to resolve the multifront crisis diplomatically, the possibility of an uncontained conflict between the regional nemeses threatens to drag in Western powers.

Israeli airstrikes continue on the 17th day in Gaza — A woman cries holding a child after Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City last October. Ali Jadallah / Anadolu via Getty Images file

Hostage Situation Complicates Israel's Response To Hamas Attacks — Relatives and friends of hostages taken from Kfar Aza in Tel Aviv in November.Amir Levy / Getty Images

“There’s no endgame — it’s starting to feel like a forever war,” said Frank Lowenstein, special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Barack Obama. The priority now is “not just about ending the war in Gaza, even temporarily, it’s also avoiding a war in Lebanon that I think we’re really concerned is going to spin out of control.”

Pandemonium and death

It was early morning in the Negev Desert one year ago, but for partygoers lost in the pulsating trance music at the Supernova festival, the night before had not yet ended.

Soon, this “journey of unity and love” was plunged into pandemonium and death. At around 6:30 a.m., Hamas fighters breached the Gaza-Israel perimeter fence, their machine guns scything down 364 of the confused, terrified festivalgoers, and hundreds more in nearby kibbutzim communities.

Among the ravers was Sagi Gabay, 28, who had been “looking at one of the most beautiful sunrises” when the violence erupted.

He briefly hid in the infamous “bunker of death,” where Hamas slaughtered dozens of Israelis with guns and grenades, leaving only moments before. “Then we walked in the open fields and then heard shooting so started to run for 30 minutes,” he said. “Above us were lots of rockets, and the villages around us were burning.”

Supporters Of Nova Festival Hostages Hold Press Conference Near Kibbutz Re'im — An Israeli soldier beneath a photo of a relative who died at the Nova music festival site in Re'im, Israel.Amir Levy / Getty Images

Civilians like him were left exposed for hours by the slow and disorganized response of the Israel Defense Forces, according to its own July investigation.

In all, 1,200 people had been killed and another 251 kidnapped. This was not just Israel’s worst terror attack; it was, for Israel’s population of 10 million, the world’s deadliest per capita since at least 1970, the start of the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database.

Gabay’s story of horror and flight. The hostage’s relative who still texts him every day in anguish. The displaced people of a destroyed kibbutz. These stories and traumas are hard to overstate for Israelis, many of whom feel besieged by hostile actors willing their eradication. And abroad, Jews have been confronted with an emboldened and metastasizing antisemitism.

Meanwhile, Iran-backed groups throughout the region have rallied to the Palestinians’ defense to varying degrees. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and powerful militants in Iraq and Syria have fired rockets at Israel in what they say is a bid to force a cease-fire in Gaza.

Israel says they merely want to destroy the Jewish state.

Israeli airstrikes continue on the fifth day in Gaza — Destruction after an Israeli airstrike Jabalia, northern Gaza.Mustafa Hassona / Anadolu via Getty Images

“We are under attack from all directions,” said Pnina Sharvit Baruch, former head of international law at the Israel Defense Forces. “Our life has turned on its head and now seems very fragile.”

Israeli public opinion appears to have shifted from its pro-war consensus. Around 56% now favor a Gaza withdrawal if it means returning all remaining hostages, according to polling by the Israel Democracy Institute.

Of 251 abducted, 154 have been freed or rescued and 97 remain in Gaza, including 33 believed to be dead, Israel says. Aside from the majority believed to be killed by Hamas, Israel accidentally shot dead three who had escaped in December, and believes it killed three others in an airstrike around the same time.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced angry protests over his failure or unwillingness to negotiate a hostage deal. He says Hamas must be destroyed — an unspecified goal, especially as its leader, Yahya Sinwar, remains at large — and wants to keep troops in Gaza afterward. The Palestinian militant group, deemed a terror organization by the U.S. and others, demands a total withdrawal.

Police use water cannon during a rally to show support for the hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly October 7 attack in Tel Aviv — Protesters sprayed with foam during a mass demonstration in Tel Aviv calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza.Tomer Appelbaum / Reuters

Netanyahu’s critics say he is too heavily influenced by the far-right members of his government. He also stands accused of using the crisis to forestall attempts to oust him politically and resume his trial for corruption.

“It’s in his political interests to sustain this chaotic situation,” said Aviv A. Oreg, a retired IDF army major whose career has included senior roles within Israel’s intelligence services.

The Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to several interview requests. In previous statements, Netanyahu has dismissed the criticism, saying his course is the best way to bring home the hostages and keep Israelis safe long term.

Unprecedented

Within hours of Hamas’ attack, Israeli bombs and missiles began to rain on Gaza.

“I will never, ever forget the sound of the bombing,” said Musheir El-Farra, 62, a Palestinian filmmaker and activist whose hometown of Khan Younis in southern Gaza came under fire that afternoon. Over the next year, he said, more than 190 members of his extended family would be killed.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York.Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

“You would go to bed and at about midnight it would start: a buzzing noise and then a big boom, another buzzing noise and a loud explosion,” he said. These bombings are “terrifying, with women and children running in different directions and screaming.”

Some 60% of Gaza’s buildings and 65% of its farmland has been damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations. Entire neighborhoods — schools, medical facilities, mosques, bakeries and homes — have been reduced to a moonscape of rubble.

The human cost has been devastating.

The Israeli operations have killed at least 41,788 people, including more than 16,000 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, with 95,000 wounded.

“Every single day there is bombing and new massacres,” said Yousef Mema, 30, a Palestinian intensive care nurse who lives and works in Khan Younis. “Anyone can be killed or bombed at any time.”

Israel responds by saying that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields.” It claims it does everything it can, including calling households to warn of imminent strikes, but ultimately says the Palestinian militant group is responsible for the deaths.

Gaza was already impoverished, overcrowded and largely inescapable, blockaded by Israel and Egypt for 17 years. Immediately after the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this would become a “complete siege,” meaning “no electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed.” (Some aid now enters Gaza, though far short of what is needed.)

Palestinian Children Food Gaza — Children at a food distribution point in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza.AFP via Getty Images

Netanyahu outlined two goals: destroy Hamas and free the hostages. He warned Gazan civilians to “leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

But flee where?

On Oct. 13, Israel ordered 1.1 million people to evacuate northern Gaza, something human rights groups said could constitute forced displacement, a war crime. Israel told Palestinians to head to the south, only to step up attacks there too. Later in the conflict, it established what it called “safe zones,” before bombing some of those areas as well.

Today, 86% of the Gaza Strip is under evacuation orders and around 2 million people — 90% of Gaza’s population — have been driven from their homes, the U.N. says. Many of these people have been displaced multiple times amid complex and often confusing evacuation instructions.

Meanwhile, famine has swept Gaza, with around half a million people facing starvation, the U.N. says. And there are shortages of medical supplies such as insulin and blood, as well as water.

Aid organizations say Israel is still preventing many aid trucks entering the conflict zone. And compounding all this is a breakdown of public order among this starving and desperate population, with anarchic fights over food turning deadly.

“We’re seeing a situation of such massive destruction, displacement and trauma,” said Tania Hary, executive director of the Israeli nonprofit organization Gisha, which campaigns for Palestinian freedom of movement. “It’s unprecedented.”

The Muslim diaspora meanwhile has endured a rise in Islamophobia. Between January and June, the Council on American-Islamic Relations recorded 4,951 reports of anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian hate in the U.S., a 60% annual increase.

‘Sheer hell’

Gaza is not the only enclave suffering. The occupied West Bank has seen its deadliest year for violence against Palestinians by far-right, extremist Jewish settlers. Since Oct. 7, 716 people, including 160 children, have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The government and police are accused by human rights groups of emboldening and even collaborating with these settlers.

Israeli Airstrikes in Northern Gaza — Trails from Israeli airstrikes over a shattered landscape in northern Gaza.John MacDougall / AFP via Getty Images file

Israel gets most of its weapons from the U.S., which provides it with more than $3 billion in military aid annually. After Oct. 7 this was dramatically increased, with Congress agreeing in April to send a further $14 billion to Israel in military assistance. (They also signed off on $9.5 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza, as well as the conflict zones of Ukraine and Sudan.)

Amid outrage at the scale of Palestinian suffering, however, President Joe Biden has been increasingly critical.

“Palestinian people have endured sheer hell,” he said in a May speech. The White House said last month it was “reasonable to assess” Israel has violated international law in Gaza using Washington’s weapons.

Nevertheless, Palestinians remain frustrated that this criticism has not extended to significantly withholding these arms or censuring Israel at the U.N.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump haven’t explained exactly how they would approach this most intractable of foreign policy problems. Harris has broadly suggested she would follow Biden’s line, while Trump has been more supportive of Netanyahu.

That has not stopped international Palestinian support from ballooning.

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice ruled in January there was a case to be heard on accusations of genocide against Israel. Four months later, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant — as well as the leaders of Hamas — over alleged war crimes. Israel has vehemently criticized both and vowed to challenge them.

Meanwhile, support for Israel has gone down in 42 of the 43 countries surveyed daily by Morning Consult, a California business intelligence company. The U.S. is the only wealthy nation polled where Israel still has a positive score, it says.

“Israel lost big parts of the younger generation in America and worldwide,” said senior Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti. “That gives me hope that things will be different in the future, but we know it’s a long way.”

Now there is a new, worsening front.

Soon after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel also came under fire from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a powerful militant and political group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and others.

Israel responded, and the neighbors have been trading strikes ever since, prompting a new humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, with more than 1 million people forced to flee their homes. Meanwhile 70,000 Israelis have been displaced.

Lebanese civilians fleeing from Dahiyeh neighborhood stay at streets due to Israeli attacks — Children dispalced by Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon comfort each other on the streets of Beirut.Murat Sengul / Anadolu via Getty Images

In recent weeks, Israel stepped up its strikes on Hezbollah, carrying out an espionage-style attack using the group’s own pagers and walkie-talkies, and killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah and more than a dozen of his senior officials.

Hezbollah is funded and armed by Iran, which responded by firing some 200 missiles at Israel. In an escalating situation, Netanyahu vowed Tuesday to make Tehran “pay” for the “big mistake.” Iran, in turn, has vowed to hit back much harder if Israel strikes it.

Some in Israel are uneasy about where this could head. “If we are dragged into a large confrontation in the north with the Iran-Shiite axis,” said Yoram Schweitzer, the IDF’s former head of international counterterrorism, then “what we have seen in Gaza will look like children’s games.”

That concern is no less palpable internationally.

“The question is, where does this end? This war that began a year ago — are we another year away? Are we two years away?” Lowenstein, Obama’s special envoy, said.