Roadsides, bomb shelters, kibbutzim, and the Nova festival site, where more than 360 people were killed and 44 were taken. Memorials ran at more than 400 places. A national ceremony is set for Tel Aviv tonight, put on by survivors and victims' families, not the government.
October 7, 2023, was the deadliest day in Israel's history. Hamas-led gunmen killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostages into Gaza. This is the first anniversary with every hostage home. Elkana Bohbot, 37, taken from Nova, is marking it in Israel for the first time since his release. He spent 738 days in captivity, most of it about 50 meters underground, with little food and a bath every few weeks. The official state memorial was Monday. Netanyahu laid a wreath at Mount Herzl and said those hours are still seared in the country.
The hostages coming home did not end the war. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, and it stopped the heaviest fighting. It did not stop Israeli strikes, and it did not disarm Hamas. Gaza health officials, whose figures U.N. agencies generally treat as reliable, put the Palestinian death toll above 74,000. Those counts do not separate civilians from fighters, and about half are reported to be women and children. Since the ceasefire, the same ministry says roughly 1,100 to 1,400 more Palestinians have been killed. Seven Israeli soldiers have died in that same stretch. Medics said Israeli forces killed at least three Palestinians today, including 16-year-old Nimr Barbakh, shot near Khan Younis.
About 80 percent of structures in Gaza are believed damaged. Most of the roughly 2 million residents have been pushed into less than half the territory. A U.N. reading as of September said 94 percent still need shelter aid, and 65 percent of households are in tents or makeshift shelters. Israel holds about two-thirds of Gaza. Hamas holds a coastal strip where most people are now living. Netanyahu told his cabinet Israel has killed about 4,000 of the roughly 6,000 militants who entered on October 7, and said, "We will reach all of them."
The same day, the IDF said it is opening West Bank operations to arrest October 7 sympathizers and tear down memorials it calls terror glorification. Al Jazeera reported Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the West Bank, killing one man and wounding 16.
Israel votes on October 27, twenty days from now, and October 7 is the campaign. Fresh reports from Haaretz, Axios, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal say UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel flagged a serious Hamas threat days before the attack. Netanyahu denies he got those warnings and has sued outlets and journalists who reported them. Polls put Likud around 20 to 22 seats, down from 32, and his bloc around 50 to 54, short of the 61 needed for a majority. The opposition does not have a clear majority either without Arab-Israeli parties.
On the eve of the anniversary, Netanyahu said Hamas is weak and may still try an attack to sway the vote. Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered higher readiness. Opposition leader Yair Lapid called it fear-mongering, and said Netanyahu ignored every warning before October 7, then found the warnings useful 28 days before an election.
Three years on, Israel is grieving in public, and for the first time without hostages still in tunnels. Gaza is not at peace. A ceasefire on paper has not stopped the dying, the tents, or the rubble. And the man who was prime minister that morning is asking voters to keep him, while the country argues over whether he was told.