Israelis gathered on Wednesday to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, saw 251 taken hostage, and sparked a devastating war in Gaza that has left much of the territory in ruins and its 2 million people living in dire conditions.
In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters and the site of a music festival that the militants overran three years ago in the deadliest attack against Israel. It is the first anniversary that all the hostages are home, marking a new stage of grief.
For Palestinians, the anniversary brings another day of life of misery and difficulties after an Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Most of the population of about 2 million people lives in vast, squalid tent camps, with large parts of the strip’s cities reduced to rubble. More than half the territory remains in the hands of the Israeli military. Despite a ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago, Israeli strikes continue almost daily.
For the region, the day highlights a startling transformation over the past three years.
Israeli troops occupy a large chunk of southern Lebanon in their conflict with the Hezbollah militant group, which began firing on Israel in 2023 in support of Hamas. Iran and the United States are locked in a confrontation that has seen attacks across Gulf Arab countries and has shaken the global economy — a conflict that Israel helped launch and that the Gaza war paved the way for, even if they weren’t directly connected.
Families mourn at the Nova Festival site
Near the town of Reim, where the music festival was underway when militants attacked, families gathered around photos of their killed relatives. Hundreds of people paid their respects to the more than 350 people killed in and around the festival site. Videos from that day showed militants gunning down fleeing revelers, shooting the wounded at point-blank range and ambushing those seeking refuge in nearby bomb shelters.
On Wednesday, survivors’ relatives hugged at 6:29 a.m. — the exact time the first rockets were launched three years ago — as explosions boomed in nearby Gaza.
Anya Davitashili, who lost her 25-year-old son, Sean, said she visits the site every Saturday. It’s where she feels closest to him.
“I have a video of him dancing here that ends at 6:29 in the morning, it’s in front of my eyes all the time,” she said. “Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing.”
A released hostage marks his first Oct. 7
Elkana Bohbot, 37, is marking the anniversary in Israel for the first time, after being released from 738 days of captivity last year. For most of that time, he said, he was held 165 feet underground in a dark, damp tunnel.
Bohbot, who was abducted from the festival, was kept in a small cell with other hostages, given very little food, and allowed to bathe only every few weeks, he said. His captors forced him to take part in several propaganda videos, including one where he acts out a fake call to his family.
In the 11 months since his release, Bohbot has undergone physical and emotional rehabilitation. In August, his wife, Rivka, gave birth to a daughter, fulfilling a promise that Bohbot made to himself in the tunnels to give his 5-year-old son, Reem, a sibling.
The newborn Michele is “not a symbol for my people, she is more of a symbol for the enemy,” Bohbot told The Associated Press. “So this child is the message for you that we were here, and we will always be here forever.”
Palestinians in Gaza live surrounded by ruins
No events are expected Wednesday in Gaza, but Hamas in a statement praised the Oct. 7 attack as an example of ”heroism, resilience and national solidarity” and said it had returned the Palestinian cause to the world’s attention.
“The conflict with the enemy did not begin on that day, as its final chapters are not written yet,” it said.
Palestinians in the territory said the extent to which their lives had deteriorated over the past three years was previously unimaginable.
“We witnessed death, destruction, and bombardment that we had never known before,” said Walid Akram, a Gaza City resident who, like most in Gaza, has been displaced by the war.
Raed Khozeiq’s coastal neighborhood in Tel al-Hawa was largely flattened. Nothing about his life now is the same, he said.
“No country in the world has gone through what we have experienced here,” he said. “A war of extermination, starvation, the absence of schools and universities — nothing remains.”
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its figures but says around half were women and children. The numbers from the ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.
While a ceasefire that took effect Oct. 10, 2025, halted the heaviest fighting, Israeli strikes have continued, targeting what Israel says are Hamas militants. Since the ceasefire, 1,460 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the ministry. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in that period. Restrictions on the entry of goods and aid have contributed to a hunger crisis, food security experts say.
The anniversary comes to a radically altered Middle East
A contentious election in Israel at the end of the month hangs over this year’s anniversary. The government’s official memorial services took place on Oct. 5, closer to the Hebrew calendar’s anniversary of the attack.
The separate commemorations reflected deep divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his handling of the war and his reluctance to launch an official inquiry into failings of the day.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is hoping to unseat Netanyahu in Israel’s upcoming elections, looked at the photos of the dead in Reim and spoke with sobbing family members.
Gadi Eisenkot, the head of the opposition Yashar! party, met with families at a bomb shelter in southern Israel where many were killed as they tried to flee.
The attack set in motion a cascade of events that led to wars across the Middle East as Israel confronted Hamas, Hezbollah and their backer Iran. Israel has seized swaths of territory in Syria and Lebanon, where more than 300,000 Lebanese remain displaced. The United States joined Israel in attacking Iran’s military and nuclear program in two rounds, battering Iran and upending global markets far from the battlefield.
Violence has also risen across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel’s far-right government has emboldened extremist settlers who have attacked Palestinians and destroyed their property.
___
Associated Press journalists Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Sam Metz in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
