By Shahzaib Saqib — SCN News
REIM, Israel/DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israelis gathered at devastated border communities and the site of the Nova music festival on Wednesday to remember those killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attack three years ago, while across the border Palestinians marked the anniversary among the ruins of a Gaza Strip transformed by war, displacement and tens of thousands of deaths.
Families, survivors and residents gathered at memorial sites across southern Israel, where Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people and seized 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, in the deadliest single day in Israel's history. The attack shattered Israel's sense of security, triggered the war in Gaza and set in motion a regional confrontation whose consequences continue to shape the Middle East three years later.
At the Nova music festival site near Reim, where more than 350 people were killed, hundreds gathered to remember victims. Relatives and survivors embraced at 6:29 a.m., the time the first rockets were launched from Gaza three years earlier, as families returned to a site that has become one of the central memorials to the attack.
The anniversary is the first since all the remaining Israeli hostages, living and dead, were returned from Gaza. The posters and signs that once dominated Israeli streets demanding their return have largely disappeared, but memorials to those killed remain widespread and the attack continues to dominate the country's politics and public life.
In Kfar Aza, one of the Israeli communities overrun during the assault, residents stood in silence as the names of those killed were read aloud. Dozens of people were killed there and 19 residents were taken hostage, while many surviving families were displaced from homes they had occupied before the attack.
The mourning in Israel contrasted sharply with scenes only a short distance away in Gaza, where much of the territory has been reduced to rubble after three years of Israeli military operations. Most of Gaza's roughly 2 million residents have been displaced during the conflict, with large numbers now living in tents, temporary shelters or damaged buildings.
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to Gaza health authorities. The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, although health officials say around half of those killed were women and children. United Nations agencies and independent experts have generally treated the ministry's overall casualty figures as credible, while Israel has disputed aspects of Palestinian casualty reporting and says its operations are directed against Hamas and other armed groups.
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025 brought the heaviest phase of fighting to an end but did not produce a permanent settlement. Israeli forces continue to control most of Gaza, while Hamas retains authority in a smaller coastal area where much of the surviving population has been concentrated.
Fresh violence was reported even as the anniversary was being observed. Gaza medical officials said Israeli strikes hit Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and Khan Younis in the south on Wednesday, killing at least two Palestinians and wounding others. Israel's military said it killed two people it identified as Hamas militants in one of the attacks.
The physical transformation of Gaza is visible across entire cities and neighborhoods. Satellite imagery shows extensive destruction in Rafah and other areas, while Israeli forces continue to control more than half of the enclave. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain unable to return to their former neighborhoods, either because their homes have been destroyed or because the areas remain under Israeli military control.
Rafah, which before the war was home to roughly a quarter of a million people, has suffered particularly extensive destruction. Residential districts, roads and other infrastructure have been demolished during military operations, leaving former residents with little prospect of returning without a reconstruction effort that has yet to begin on the scale required.
Israel says destruction in areas under its control is necessary to remove Hamas military infrastructure, tunnels and other threats. Israeli authorities maintain that Hamas embedded fighters and weapons among civilian areas, while critics and international bodies have accused Israel of using disproportionate force and causing widespread civilian destruction. Israel rejects allegations that its campaign constitutes genocide or that it deliberately targets civilians.
For Palestinians, the anniversary carries little sense that the war has ended. Families remain scattered across Gaza, some separated by military-controlled territory and others divided after relatives left the enclave during the fighting. Food, housing, medical care, education and employment remain severely disrupted despite the reduction in major combat.
Restrictions on goods entering Gaza and the destruction of agricultural and commercial infrastructure have contributed to persistent food insecurity. Humanitarian organizations say the situation improved from the most severe periods of the war after aid increased, but hundreds of thousands of people remain dependent on outside assistance for basic necessities.
Hamas defended the October 7 assault in a statement on Wednesday, arguing that the attack had returned international attention to the Palestinian cause. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization and has maintained that eliminating the group's military capability remains necessary to prevent another attack on the scale of October 7.
The attack and the Israeli response reshaped the wider Middle East. Hezbollah opened a front against Israel from Lebanon after the Gaza war began, triggering an extended conflict that ultimately resulted in Israeli forces occupying territory in southern Lebanon. Fighting also intensified between Israel and Iran, while the United States became directly involved in attacks against Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
The regional consequences have extended into Syria, the occupied West Bank and international shipping routes, while confrontation involving Iran and its allies has contributed to volatility in global energy markets. What began with the October 7 assault and Israel's campaign in Gaza therefore evolved into a much broader struggle involving some of the Middle East's most powerful military actors.
Three years later, the political consequences inside Israel remain unresolved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to face criticism from families of victims and political opponents who accuse his government of failing to prevent the attack and resisting demands for an independent investigation into the security failures that allowed Hamas fighters to penetrate Israel's border defenses.
Netanyahu rejects responsibility for the security breakdown and has resisted calls for an independent commission. In a statement marking the anniversary, he said Israel remained committed to pursuing those responsible for the attack and completing its military objectives.
The dispute has acquired greater urgency because Israel is heading toward a general election later this month. Demonstrators gathered outside parliament in Jerusalem on Wednesday demanding accountability, turning the anniversary into both a national memorial and a reminder of the unresolved political argument over responsibility for October 7.
Opinion polls indicate neither Netanyahu nor his principal rivals currently possess a clear path to a governing majority, making the election potentially another turning point in a country still divided over the war, security policy and the government's handling of its aftermath.
For Israeli survivors, however, the anniversary remains primarily personal. Former hostages continue to describe the psychological and physical consequences of captivity, while families of those killed return repeatedly to the communities, roads, shelters and festival grounds where relatives died.
For Palestinians in Gaza, remembrance is inseparable from the destruction that followed. Families who once lived together in apartments and neighborhoods have been scattered between tent camps and damaged buildings, while many have lost relatives, homes, businesses and livelihoods during the three-year conflict.
The physical distance separating the Nova festival site from Gaza is only a few kilometres, but Wednesday's commemorations revealed two profoundly different experiences of the same three years. Israelis mourned a day of killing and hostage-taking that permanently altered their country's sense of security, while Palestinians looked across landscapes transformed by the military campaign that followed.
Three years after October 7, neither society has returned to the life it knew before that morning. Israel continues to confront the trauma and political consequences of its deadliest attack, while Gaza remains devastated, its population largely displaced and reconstruction constrained by unresolved security and political disputes.
The anniversary therefore marks not an end to the conflict that began on October 7, 2023, but the persistence of its consequences — 1,200 people killed in the Hamas-led attack, 251 taken hostage, more than 74,000 Palestinians subsequently killed in Gaza, and millions of Israelis and Palestinians still living with a war that has reshaped both societies and the wider Middle East.