October 7 one year on: the horror of the Hamas terror attack haunts Israel and still guides its security policy

One year ago the people of Israel experienced the biggest atrocity they have known since their state was founded. October 7 was a day that would completely change the perspective of its people about the future security of their country. And it would bring grim reminders of the past, not only to Israel, but to Jewish people around the world.

The attack began on a Saturday morning, the holiday of Simchat Torah, at 6:29 am. Hamas launched approximately 4,300 rockets towards central and southern Israel. An Israeli military probe found that, under cover of the rocket barrage, roughly 6,000 Hamas terrorists and Palestinian looters crossed from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

At the end of that terrible day, 1,200 Israelis had been murdered. Among the victims were 364 civilians murdered while attending the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel.

Thousands more people were injured. Some of them will be left with disabilities for life. Another 250 Israelis and others were were kidnapped and taken into Gaza as hostage. More than 100 remain in Gaza, unaccounted for after a year – missed and mourned by their loved ones.

October 7 has had a significant impact on the state of Israel and its citizens. First, it brought back to Israelis the feeling of personal insecurity. In Israel, a country that has experienced terrorism for its entire history, all adults will remember the frequent suicide attacks by Hamas on buses and in restaurants around the country during the “second intifada” during the early 2000s. And many will recall the attacks during the Oslo peace process a decade earlier.

During the five-year second intifada, about 1,000 Israelis were murdered in terror attacks. On October 7, more Israelis were killed on one day.

Until October 7, the idea of a small army infiltrating Israel and massacring innocent civilians in their homes, was an impossible horror scenario. Since that day many have asked, “Where was the warning from our intelligence agencies? Where were the Israel Defence Forces? How could this have been allowed to happen?” And they are determined, more than ever, that this can never happen again.

No future for peace?

Another key aspect that the October 7 attack affected among the Jewish public in Israel is their belief in peace with the Palestinians. Although a few still believed that reconciliation could be reached – especially among the liberal left – the barbarism of the Hamas attack appears to have crushed all Israeli confidence in peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians.

The enormous tragedy was that in the kibbutzim near the border with the Gaza Strip lived Jews who still believed in peace. Some of them engaged in activities for the residents of the Gaza Strip, including transportation of Palestinian patients for treatment in hospitals in Israel and all kinds of other humanitarian activities.

These Israelis believed that these actions would bring the two people closer to peace. But these activists were among those who were murdered in their homes and taken captive by their neighbours from Gaza in that terrorist attack by Hamas, an act that only strengthened the belief among so many Israeli Jews that the Palestinians do not want peace but wish to eradicate the Jewish state and its people.

Changing the dynamic

Before October 7, Israel didn’t want to rule the Gaza strip. It preferred to keep Hamas as the government there – but keeping it deterred and militarily weakened, so it wouldn’t be able to pose an existential threat to Israel. Back then, Israel’s main security challenge was the Iranian nuclear programme together with Hezbollah’s precision missile project. Israel certainly didn’t want to be responsible for having to govern 2 million people in Gaza.

Successive Israeli governments have allowed millions of dollars of money from Qatar to flow to Hamas to prop up the economy in the belief that stability would help maintain the status quo and keep the situation in Gaza calm. They have also issued permits for tens of thousands of Palestinians to cross the border to work inside Israel.

All that has changed with October 7. Jerusalem now realises that people who lived near the border with the Gaza Strip and in the north of Israel near the Lebanese border, who have been displaced in the past year, will not go home until they feel safe and that the security situation has been resolved. These people feel they can’t live in a situation where they are under constant threat from Hamas and Hezbollah, with the risk of another attack of this kind.

The bottom line for Israel’s leaders is that the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah must be removed. Security is now absolutely paramount. And this has driven policy since.

On October 7 2023, Israelis – and many Jewish people around the world – experienced pain and distress that will haunt them for many years to come. But Israeli society – perhaps more than any democratic society in the world – has a high level of national resilience that has stood up to horrors in the past. It will surely be able to overcome them. However, like the Holocaust, October 7 has become part of the Jewish people’s collective memory.

Ori Wertman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.