Israel marked the second anniversary of the Hamas attack that began its longest war in subdued fashion on Tuesday, with new hopes of ending the conflict but with 48 Israeli hostages still in captivity and its exhausted military still adding to the death toll of Palestinians and to the destruction in the Gaza Strip.
The arrival Monday evening of the Jewish harvest festival, Sukkot, a national and religious holiday, shut down most businesses across Israel for the day. The government delayed official remembrances of the war’s traumatic first day until Oct. 16, after the end of the High Holiday season.
But Tuesday’s milestone was inescapable nonetheless. There were quiet gatherings at some of the Israeli kibbutzim near Gaza that suffered the most in the Hamas-led massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, and informal events drew participants throughout the country.
In Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, a group of about 20 runners in T-shirts with messages advocating the return of the hostages made its way early in the morning along a popular route surrounding the town, which is home to Nimrod Cohen, a soldier in captivity. Passing cars honked in solidarity.
In Kfar Azza, a tiny kibbutz less than two miles from Gaza where at least 62 neighbors were killed and 19 taken hostage, several dozen residents held a memorial that began with a moment of silence at 6:29 a.m. That was the moment on a Saturday morning when Hamas began launching thousands of rockets, overwhelming Israel’s air-defense system.
Under cover of that aerial onslaught was the main Hamas offensive: An invasion by thousands of militants who swarmed across the fence separating Gaza from border towns and dozens of tiny agricultural communities, who killed residents in their homes, who gunned young people down at a music festival and who overran Israeli military bases.
All told, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 more captive. It was the bloodiest day in Israel’s history and the deadliest for Jews anywhere since the Holocaust.
But a shocked Israel mobilized to unleash a devastating military response that has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, including both civilians and combatants, according to the Gaza health ministry. It has wounded tens of thousands more, flattened thousands of buildings and reduced much of the territory’s infrastructure — and its landscape — to rubble, shrapnel and sand.
The war has forced Palestinians in Gaza into a punishing cycle of fleeing Israeli attacks by taking shelter in a supposed haven in another part of the territory, only to have to flee again. And food shortages and obstacles to supplying and distributing humanitarian aid to Gaza residents led an international group of experts on hunger crises to declare in August that part of the enclave was suffering from famine.
In Israel, the war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to end it in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages — despite polls showing broad support for that — have bitterly divided society and exacerbated fissures that existed before Oct. 7. Many Israelis contend that he has extended the war, forgoing opportunities for a cease-fire even after the decapitation of Hamas’s leadership to keep his right-wing coalition together and extend his hold on power.
The prolonged conflict has forced reservists to serve multiple lengthy tours of duty, draining the economy and putting soldiers’ lives on hold, while inflaming longstanding resentment of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are exempt from military service.
Israel’s conduct of the war, including the tremendous casualty count and gruesome images of children and others killed and maimed in Gaza, as well as statements by far-right allies of Mr. Netanyahu of their desire to depopulate and annex the territory, have prompted widespread allegations, including by a United Nations commission and Amnesty International, that Israel has been engaged in genocide.
Israel denies this and insists that its military works to protect Palestinian civilians, including by warning them of its attacks. It also blames Hamas fighters for endangering civilians by fighting from the cover of hospitals and schools.
On Monday in Rome, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, in an interview with L’Osservatore Romano newspaper, sharply criticized what he called the “ongoing massacre” in Gaza. He accused the Israeli army of disregarding “the fact that it is targeting a largely defenseless population.”
Outrage over the Gaza war has fueled a global rise in antisemitism and violence against Jews. That has included the killings of an elderly man at a march in Boulder, Colo., in support of the Israeli hostages; of two Israeli Embassy workers in Washington, D.C., outside a Jewish museum; and of two worshipers at a synagogue in Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.
The war’s continuation has also ratcheted up Israel’s isolation on the world stage. That was never clearer than in late September, when 10 countries, including traditional allies like Britain, Canada, France and Australia, recognized Palestinian statehood for the first time.
Yet by some measures, Palestinian political aspirations appear farther out of reach than ever. The Oct. 7 attacks caused the Israeli body politic to shift rightward, with many liberals who might have once belonged to the Israeli peace camp now feeling betrayed and saying they oppose a Palestinian state on Israel’s border.
On both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, the war seemed far from over on Tuesday.
In Deir al-Balah, in the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes could be heard overhead at 1 a.m. and again after 5:30 a.m. As the sun rose, gunfire could be heard in the eastern part of the town, along with the blasts of occasional artillery rounds.
After 7 a.m., rocket sirens sounded in Netiv HaAsara, an Israeli community on Gaza’s northern border, and the Israeli military said that a projectile had fallen in the area.
In Kfar Azza, the community’s moment of silence at 6:29 was anything but, as drones whined, helicopters flew and explosions frequently ripped through the air.
“Some say what happened is receding into the distance, but for me, it’s stronger than ever,” said Nitzan Kaner, 37, who said she was trapped for about 30 hours when militants attacked. Tuesday morning, she said she had experienced a sleepless night: “I couldn’t stop thinking about what we went through.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Kfar Azza, Israel, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot. Bilal Shbair contributed reporting from Deir al-Balah, Gaza. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
David M. Halbfinger is on his second assignment as Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, leading coverage of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. After his first tour there, from 2017 to 2021, he served as Politics editor, overseeing coverage of national politics, threats to democracy and the 2024 presidential campaign.
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