October 7 marks 12 months of escalation into the ‘forever war’ now engulfing the Middle East

One year after Hamas’s mass killing of nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and abduction of 251 others, and almost a year into the Israeli retribution that has so far slain almost 42,000 in Gaza, there seems no prospect of resolution.

Far from it. The violence is expanding not only in Gaza but also in Lebanon, where Israel is carrying out targeted assassinations, airstrikes and a ground invasion. Now Iran – whose commanders have also been “liquidated” by Israel – has fired missiles on Israeli territory, raising concerns that an Israeli-Iranian war will be next.

If the anniversary of the October 7 massacre poses a question, is not as much: “How did we get here?” but “How long will this go on?”

The answer for now is that there is no answer.

Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the region has been marked by wars and the violent intervention of other countries in the region. The attack of October 7 itself can be directly tracked back to Israel’s 11-day clash with Hamas in 2021, after which Hamas leader Mohammed Deif reportedly began planning a cross-border ground assault both for revenge and for a reassertion of power.

October 7 was an unprecedented shock for Israel and the region. Allies in the west pledged support for Israeli security while pressing Israel to remove Hamas from power in Gaza through political and economic measures.

But Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, presented with an opportunity to serve his own ends, demurred.

Before the massacre, Netanyahu had faced a possible trial on bribery charges and split Israeli society with his attempt to subjugate the courts to executive power. By summer 2023 there were mass protests across the country, discord within the government and threats by reservists to refuse military service. But October 7 gave him the chance for the perfect distraction: a campaign to “destroy” Hamas.

From the outset, there were queries both inside and outside Israel about the endgame. Even if Hamas could be annihilated, who would govern a devastated Gaza? In the absence of that governance, would Israel occupy all or part of the Strip?

In the opening months of the Israeli response, Netanyahu did not need to answer the questions. All he had to do was to sustain the assault, even as the number of Palestinian casualties – almost half of whom were women and children — reached the tens of thousands, and around 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population were displaced.

But in the spring, Benny Gantz – one of the three members of the war cabinet and former head of the Israel Defense Forces – resigned. He said Netanyahu had put his personal and political interests ahead of the existential needs of the state of Israel.

This summer, defence minister Yoav Gallant, the other war cabinet member, privately said that Hamas could not be destroyed. Netanyahu’s office publicly denounced him for an “anti-Israel narrative” and threatened his dismissals.

And hundreds of thousands of Israelis were back on the streets. They demanded that Netanyahu put a priority on the return of hostages, around 100 of whom – dead or alive – are still held by Hamas.

But Netanyahu appeared at every turn to be undermining any prospect of a ceasefire that would return those hostages, including the assassination of Hamas’s lead negotiator and political head Ismail Haniyeh in an apartment in Iran’s capital Tehran.

Now, what appears to have banished any chance of peace in the region, certainly in the foreseeable future, is the expansion of the conflict to a second front in Lebanon – this time with a larger adversary, Iran, in Netanyahu’s sights.

Israel and Hezbollah had waged a low-intensity conflict since October 7. Over the year to mid-September 2024, Israeli cross-border fire killed more than 350 Hezbollah fighters and around 100 civilians. Hezbollah killed 22 Israeli troops and 26 civilians, including at least 12 young people on a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in Syria.

Netanyahu needed to escalate this conflict into a war. Doing so, he pushed the public to offer its support and reconciled with defence minister Gallant and the military, which favours an expansion of attacks.

On September 17, Israel detonated explosive-rigged pagers in Beirut and across the country. A day later, Hezbollah’s back-up network of walkie-talkies was detonated in the same way. At least 37 people were killed and thousands wounded.

Then, on September 27, Israel went for the kill. Having already assassinated several Hezbollah commanders, it targeted the leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior officials. US-made bombs weighing 2,000 pounds (900 kg) levelled a block in southern Beirut. Nasrallah’s body and those of Hezbollah’s senior military officials were later pulled from the rubble.

On October 1, Israeli forces crossed the border into southern Lebanon.

Hours later, Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles, including for the first time hypersonic Fattah missiles, at Israeli territory.

Facing serious economic problems and international isolation and with a new government just in place, Iranian leaders had not retaliated for Haniyeh’s killing as it had promised. But following Nasrallah’s assassination, the Islamic Republic had no choice but to react if it wanted to dispel the appearance of weakness at home and in the region.

Yet at the same time – as before, in April 2024 – Iran telegraphed the attack, notifying Arab countries and giving them time to pass the message to US and thus to Israel. As a result, only two Israeli civilians suffered minor injuries. (In a tragic irony, the only fatality was a Palestinian in the West Bank, killed by falling debris.) Far from portending a direct Iran-Israel War, Tehran’s regime had calibrated its response to avoid one. Meanwhile, it had strengthened its adversary, Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister publicly said Tehran had made a “big mistake” and promised “it will pay for it”. But Iran had done him a favour. Now, rather than facing any pressure to step aside, he can tell Israelis he is needed more than ever in the face of an existential threat from the Islamic Republic as well as winning the wars against Hamas and Hezbollah and securing the release of the hostages.

War without end

Reports have emerged, so far unconfirmed, that Israel has assassinated Hassan Nasrallah’s potential successor, Hashem Safieddine, in Beirut. If so, he joins more than 2,000 others so far killed in the conflict in Lebanon, including 127 children and 261 women.

Meanwhile, last week in Gaza around 120 people perished in 48 hours, some in a school and an orphanage used as shelters, others in their homes. The death toll since October 7 in Gaza is now almost 42,000, including at least 11,000 children.

In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli airstrike killed a Hamas commander and seven fighters in the Tulkarem refugee camp. Ten civilians were also killed in the strike. And in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights in Syria, two Israeli soldiers have been killed by a drone launched by the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

Maybe Israel’s prime minister has a dream where every senior Hamas figure and every Hezbollah leader is killed. Where Iran has accepted the loss of its allies and, more concerned about domestic problems, has stepped back from confrontation. And where the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for him will not be enforced. Perhaps he imagines standing on a podium under a banner: “Mission Accomplished”.

But in the real world, slain leaders are replaced. Those who bury their dead do not forget or forgive, and those who have felt the punishment of arms do not forego weapons but embrace them. So it seems unlikely that’s how the story will end.

Sadly, it’s far more likely it will never end.

Scott Lucas 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.