Sky News’ Yalda Hakim reflects on a year of war between Israel and Hamas, tracing the fighting, grief and future through one year, two sounds, three miles and four weeks
It’s been just over one year since the day that changed the lives of Israelis and Palestinians for generations.
The tragedy of 7 October lives inside most Israelis in a visceral way that is magnified by a unique history.
After enduring bloody pogroms and the Holocaust, this is a nation whose modern existence was meant as the ultimate guarantor that ‘never again’ would the Jewish people be slaughtered defenceless.
Yet on that day, as Hamas infiltrated Israel, a bloody chime of history sounded as 1,200 Jews were murdered.
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For those in Gaza and now Lebanon, it is one year since Israeli retaliation began against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Displacement, disease and death hang in the air in these places, creating tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people.
And what began as a terrorist attack against Israel increasingly feels like it has become a regional war that risks engulfing the entire Middle East.
A year ago, it felt like the once inconceivable normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia might be inevitable.
Instead, the Palestinian issue is back on the international agenda at the price of thousands of dead.
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Across the world, and especially in the United States and Europe, the war in Gaza has polarized and enflamed societies in a way no other conflict has – with an outpouring of emotions about Israel and the Palestinians.
Hundreds of thousands march in capitals every weekend calling for an end to the conflict.
The morning at the memorial was sombre and emotional. Parents wept for their lost children.
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Israel’s darkest day will forever be a part of its history
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As I walked around the site of the Nova Music Festival in Re’im, I was struck by two distinct sounds.
First, the anguished wailing of mothers – breaking the silence to cry out in unspeakable grief. The other – every 90 seconds – was the sound of artillery fire going into Gaza.
These are two sounds which have become inextricably linked over this year.
As mothers cry in Israel, just three miles away in Gaza, mothers also weep for their dead children.
According to the UN – at the time of writing – 11,355 children in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombardment.
The health ministry in Gaza puts the total number of dead at over 42,000 people.
According to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are an estimated further 10,000 people still not found under the rubble.
In Lebanon, the death toll is also growing. Their health ministry says over 2,000 people have now died as a result of Israeli bombardment, and a fifth of the population is now displaced.
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That is the distance between where I was standing at the site of the Nova Music Festival memorial and the Gaza Strip.
All that separates the two worlds – because they do feel like separate worlds – is a wall. A wall that was torn through on 7 October 2023.
In the early hours of that day, Hamas brutally killed more than 350 people gathered here at a music festival and took as many as 40 others hostage.
People hid for hours on end, watching helplessly as their friends were killed in front of them and others were dragged back into Gaza.
Many texted relatives saying the IDF was coming but it took the army five hours to arrive – arguably the worst intelligence and security failure in Israeli history.
In other communities, it was as many as 12 hours.
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Three miles away, Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza, yet the overwhelming majority of hostages are still not freed and Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the 7 October attack, has not been captured or killed.
Gaza itself is in rubble. One in five buildings has been destroyed, and almost half damaged. Mosques, schools and shops are flattened.
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Life has changed for every single person in the Gaza Strip. The UN says nearly the entire population of Gaza has been displaced.
It’s now just under four weeks until a knife-edged US presidential election.
Whoever wins is likely to inherit a widening war that is no longer centred on just the Israelis and the Palestinians, but Iran, its regional proxies and allies stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, and the fate of its quickening nuclear programme.
On one hand, Donald Trump is unpredictable. He says he would end the Ukraine war on day one, he claims there would never have been 7 October if he had been in the White House, and he warns darkly about the threat of World War Three absent his return to power.
But what would he do? Will he embolden and support Israeli pushback on the Iranians, or will he rein them in? No one knows for certain – including perhaps Trump himself.
Kamala Harris’s foreign policy will probably look similar to Joe Biden’s: Words of warning to Benjamin Netanyahu, but military and economic support to Israel.
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Israel’s offensives in the last few months have showcased the limits of American power, at least as wielded under President Biden.
Before Americans vote, however, it seems all but certain the Israelis will strike Iran – retaliation for an unprecedented ballistic missile attack on the Jewish State earlier this month that Israel and the US largely blunted.
How and when Israel hits Iran is the source of intense speculation – including whether the target could include the country’s energy infrastructure or nuclear sites.
The term ‘October surprise’ was coined in 1980 when Ronald Reagan feared that a last-minute deal to release American hostages in Iran might earn Jimmy Carter enough votes to remain as president.
Forty-four years later, and less than a month before election day, Iran and the wider Middle East could once again deliver another surprise.
