What Happened in Israel on October 7, 2023?

On the morning of Saturday, October 7, 2023, many religious Israelis were preparing for the celebration of 'Simchat Torah' and the last hours of the 'Sukkot' festival, while secular Israelis had plans to attend concerts and cultural events in southern Israel. At the same time, the Israeli community and media, which had been engaged in debates about Prime Minister Netanyahu's judicial reform plans for about a year, were engrossed in heated discussions and media reports about Israel's intelligence failure during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, unaware that the country was on the brink of a larger surprise: an attack by the extremist group Hamas from Gaza on southern Israel. On that day, in the fields of Kibbutz 'Re'im', located five kilometers from the Gaza border, several thousand young Israelis and foreign tourists had been drinking and dancing at the Nova music festival, which had been held annually at this location and was a non-stop party. Senior officials in the Gaza Division of the Israeli Army had, despite intense internal discussions, agreed to hold this festival with thousands of participants close to Gaza. By Saturday morning, every hour dozens of young Israelis were arriving at the festival from Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel with their cars and friends, creating a festival aimed at promoting peace and peaceful coexistence near a kibbutz that had been known for decades for supporting peaceful living with Palestinians from Gaza. At 6:29 AM, as rocket attacks from Gaza began, warning sirens sounded in many parts of the country, but few young people at the Nova festival were aware of the danger; they were either focused on their music and joy or, as some survivors later testified, thought this was just a limited rocket attack that would end within minutes. It took a while for the few guards monitoring the area to inform the young people that they needed to flee. Thousands of young Israelis began to run through the thickets, some got into their cars, trying to escape back to their cities in Israel. But it was too late; dozens of Hamas militants had arrived at the site, surrounded the surrounding roads, and opened fire in all directions, including on vehicles on the roads. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the US and the EU. At that moment, few understood the scale of the attack. It took more than a day to determine what had happened. In the Prime Minister's office, it was recorded that at 6:29 AM that day, Benjamin Netanyahu's military secretary woke him up and informed him that the country was under attack from thousands of rockets, but during the night several senior intelligence officials and senior internal security officials had a meeting regarding suspicious border events, which ended without a decision; the events of those hours have since become the subject of a major struggle in Israel, with many calling for the establishment of a national inquiry commission to clarify the dimensions of the incident. The beginning of the offensive that Hamas had planned for years began at 6:29 AM on October 7, when warning sirens sounded in dozens of settlements and border towns in southern Israel. Palestinian media simultaneously released images of dozens of rockets being fired by Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip towards Israel. Israelis also published images of rockets fired from Gaza, particularly towards cities and settlements in the country; media reports indicated that explosions were heard in the settlements around the Gaza Strip, the port city of Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, Herzliya, and Gedera. The sound of warning sirens was heard in various areas from the south to central Israel. Television stations interrupted their entertainment programs to report a major security surprise. Israeli sources in their subsequent summaries announced that that morning, 4,300 rockets were fired towards Israel. The firing of thousands of rockets was a plan to mislead Israelis so that by going to shelters, at least in the early hours of the attack, they would not realize the assault of thousands of trained Hamas forces on the country. By 7 AM, reports emerged of armed Palestinians, particularly affiliated with the extremist group Hamas, crossing the Gaza border and reaching Israeli cities and settlements, especially multiple kibbutzim near Gaza and the city of Sderot. Gradually, the sound of gunfire was heard in the city of Sderot near the Gaza border. The Hamas attackers had managed to enter this city. A video quickly circulated on social media showing several armed Palestinians in a white vehicle moving through the streets of Sderot. At 8 AM, Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas's military wing, issued an audio message from his hideout announcing the attack on Israel named 'Storm of Al-Aqsa'. He stated that Hamas had targeted Israeli cities and settlements with the firing of thousands of rockets, and the reason for the operation was 'Israel's aggression against Al-Aqsa Mosque'. Mohammed Deif announced the end of the unwritten security coordination between his group and Israel, stating: 'The Palestinian people will resume their revolution to establish a state from today.' He called on Muslims in the West Bank, Lebanon, and other parts of the region in the 'Axis of Resistance' to join this 'storm'. The ground operation of Hamas's assault on Israeli cities and settlements was a combined attack that also used drones to disable Israeli observation centers. Videos released in those early hours showed that some Hamas members used paragliders to cross the Gaza border. Additionally, by creating breaches in the border fence using bulldozers, hundreds of Hamas forces reached Israeli cities and settlements on motorcycles. The Hamas attackers also opened fire on Israeli vessels at sea. Concurrently, Hamas members and other armed Palestinian groups engaged in clashes with Israeli army forces along the Gaza fence, with some even managing to enter several Israeli military bases nearby, killing dozens of boys and girls soldiers and abducting others to Gaza. Members of Hamas managed to create breaches in the Gaza border fence at five major points by controlling checkpoints at the Karem Shalom and Erez crossings, but overall, breaches were created in 119 points along the approximately 60-kilometer border between Gaza and Israel. According to data collected by Israel from thousands of cameras and other evidence, 3,800 elite Hamas forces reached Israeli cities and settlements using small vehicles, motorcycles, bulldozers, and paragliders, and some also entered Israeli cities via speedboats. With the border fence broken, more than 2,200 other 'Palestinian civilians' living in the Gaza Strip rushed on foot, by bicycle, and with donkey carts to loot and kill Israelis in the nearest settlements. Some actively participated in killing Israelis, while others managed to abduct several Israeli citizens and take them back to Gaza. Some were able to make multiple trips between Gaza and these settlements during those hours, stealing tractors and vehicles from Israeli kibbutzim. One Palestinian man called his mother in Gaza from the mobile phone of an elderly Israeli woman he had killed, joyfully informing her that he had killed the woman with his own hands and was calling from her mobile phone. His mother replied that she would go pray in thanks and praised her son. From the early hours of the attack on October 7, various statistics were published regarding the number of casualties and hostages taken by Hamas and other Palestinian groups. According to the latest official statistics released by Israel after extensive investigations, 1,145 people were killed on the Israeli side as a result of the armed clashes that day. Among the victims, 779 were civilians, including 38 children. 71 foreign citizens were also killed during those hours, most of whom were migrant workers from East Asian countries. One Thai worker is still missing. 383 of the Israelis killed that day were attendees of the 'Nova' festival. 17 police officers who were present to protect these young people lost their lives before carrying out their mission. In total, 366 of the Israelis killed that day were military personnel or members of security forces or police. Israel has acknowledged that a small number of casualties that day resulted from friendly fire. Until then, in the decades-long history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Palestinian militant groups had only managed to abduct a few Israelis to negotiate for their demands. However, on October 7, within a few hours, 251 people from Israeli territory were taken hostage by Hamas or other Palestinian groups and taken to Gaza, most of whom were civilians. 30 of the hostages were children. 101 of the abducted individuals, including two children, several elderly men over eighty years old, and young women, remain in Hamas's custody in Gaza. One of them is Romi Gonen, the granddaughter of an Iranian-born grandmother living in Israel. Alon Shamriz, one of the hostages who was the child of a Jewish family originally from Abadan living in Israel, managed to escape from Hamas after two months but was killed by Israeli friendly fire. Israeli media and the Knesset, the country's parliament, have witnessed multiple testimonies from women in the first weeks of this crisis recounting the sexual assaults by Hamas members on the murdered victims. Some Israeli officials stated that Hamas had prepared a group for this criminal act. Following numerous complaints from the President and other Israeli officials about the silence of the international community regarding this issue, about five months after the Hamas attack, a research team from the United Nations prepared a report indicating that sexual violence, including individual and gang rapes, occurred during the October 15 Hamas attacks on Israel. According to that report, there is 'compelling evidence' that hostages were subjected to sexual violence. That investigation was conducted under the supervision of Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Hamas has denied the involvement of its members in sexual violence. However, the UN report emphasized that sexual violence during the Hamas attack occurred at least in three locations: the Nova music festival and its surroundings, Route 232, and Kibbutz Re'im. The attack on October 15 by Hamas initiated a bloody and devastating war that continues to this day, a year later. Israel launched the war with three declared objectives: 'to strike Hamas and eliminate the military capabilities of this group', 'to remove the threat from Hamas to the lives of the Israeli people', and 'to dissolve the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip', and has so far inflicted heavy blows on this group and other armed Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank. The senior leadership of Hamas has collapsed, and its main leaders, except for Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar, have been killed. The two have seemingly survived for a year by moving Israeli hostages from one tunnel to another. Israel apparently refrains from striking the tunnels where the remaining hostages are held to avoid endangering the lives of these few dozen hostages. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political bureau, was killed ten months after the war began in an operation attributed to Israel, not in Gaza but in northern Tehran. Besides these strikes, a year after the war began, the Gaza Strip has almost turned into a ruin, with more than two million of its residents displaced. So far, over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in this besieged strip, many of whom were children. The exact number of militants killed in Gaza remains unclear, but Israel insists that it has eliminated thousands of them, the most significant being Mohammed Deif. Only on the day of the surprise attack and one or two days after that, 1,609 Palestinians from the Hamas attackers who entered Israel were killed on Israeli soil, and about 200 others were arrested. According to Israeli officials, the Gaza war has engaged the country on 'seven fronts' and, on its first anniversary, has led Israel to inflict severe military blows on the Hezbollah group in Lebanon to respond to this Iranian proxy that has attacked Israel in support of Hamas over the past year. The series of military developments in the final days leading up to the anniversary of the Gaza war, and then the wave of missile attacks from Iran on Israel on October 1, along with the imminent response that Israel has in mind, have raised concerns about the potential expansion of this crisis into a regional conflict involving Iran.