Australia / Israel Review

Year in, year out

On October 7, Israel will mark one year since the terrible events of that dark and bloody Saturday in which almost 1,200 Israelis, tourists and foreign workers were killed and more than 200 taken hostage as Hamas launched a brutal assault on Gaza border communities, military bases and a music festival.

Since that day, Israel has been irreversibly changed in numerous ways. October 7 was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, its one-day toll greater than all the killings and massacres of the five-year long Second Intifada (2000-2005). The massacre eroded Israel’s certainty in itself; it took Israel back to 1948, back to the desperately anxious waiting period before the 1967 Six-Day War. In an instant, it smashed any aura of invincibility built on Israel’s technological and military might and economic prowess. Once more, Israel today is a country that sees itself as fighting for its survival in a relentlessly hostile region. It also finds itself isolated internationally, with charges pending at the International Court of Justice where it is accused of genocide, and arrest warrants expected to be issued against senior Israeli military and political officials by the International Criminal Court, amid mass anti-Israel demonstrations worldwide. 

Israeli historian and intellectual Micah Goodman has described October 7 as a “black hole” in the country’s history – an event that threw time and space into chaos. For a short period, Israeli sovereignty in the western Negev was absent and Hamas was able to wreak havoc with little to check it. Israeli society has been shaken to its roots. The very essence of Zionism and Jewish self-determination – designed to prevent that kind of massacre of Jews – has been undermined. 

The events of that day and the year that has followed remind all Israelis that, after more than 75 years, the country’s presence as a sovereign, independent Jewish nation-state still cannot be taken for granted.

Furthermore, one year on, tens of thousands of people remain displaced from their homes, both in the north and in the Gaza envelope, while more than 100 hostages, living and dead, remain in the hands of Hamas with their fate unclear. While Israeli society united at first under the slogan Be-yachad nenatze’ach – “Together, we will triumph” – the issue of the hostages and what price should be paid for their release has become increasingly divisive. Israelis are split over whether to make far-reaching concessions to Hamas that would end the war but secure their release, or whether to prioritise continuing the war to eliminate Hamas as a military and governing force. 

At a political level too, the initial unity has dissipated. The unity government established a few days after October 7 has collapsed, and political tensions are on the rise. The Hamas attack took place at a time when Israel was engaged in an internal political battle over a legislative package that one side called “judicial reforms” and the other a “judicial coup”, and which many commentators described as expressing a battle over Israel’s identity and future – liberal and secular versus conservative and religious. 

In recent months, protests have again become increasingly political, mixing calls for a hostage deal with calls for early elections. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu currently trails badly in the polls. According to polling done in mid-September, were elections to be held now, the governing coalition would win 49 seats and the opposition bloc 66 seats – easily enough to form a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. If Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s one-time aide turned rival who served as prime minister from 2021-22, were to return to politics – as rumours suggest he intends to do – the turnaround would be even larger, with a Bennett-led bloc set to return to power with around 69 seats against 46 for the current governing coalition. However, unless the current governing coalition collapses, elections are not required until 2026. 

The long-standing controversy in Israel over conscripting ultra-Orthodox (“Haredi”) young men has become ever more urgent as, post-October 7, it has become clear Israel requires a larger army to cope with all the threats it faces. The Supreme Court ended the blanket exemption for eligible Haredi men earlier this year. However, efforts to draft even a limited number of ultra-Orthodox men of conscription age who are not engaged in full time Torah study have failed miserably and been met by mass Haredi protests. 

Yet any attempts to pass new legislation to regulate the military service – or exemption from military service – of ultra-Orthodox religious school students is likely to exacerbate tensions at a time when Israeli reservists are being called on to serve for double the usual number of reserve days, while mandatory service for full-time soldiers is being extended due to the current war effort. On the other hand, there is no more important issue than largely preserving the Haredi draft exemption for the two ultra-Orthodox parties which currently serve in the governing coalition, and whose votes are indispensable to keeping it in power. 

Along with the hostages, the question of the north is perhaps the most pressing on Israel’s agenda. With the exception of eight kibbutzim that will require a major rebuild, many residents of the Gaza envelope have begun to return home, despite sporadic rocket fire from Gaza, as Hamas is no longer considered able to pose a major threat to these communities. Yet while an end to hostilities in Gaza may lead to an end to the war of attrition with Hezbollah in the north, the displaced residents of the region say they will not return home unless Hezbollah forces are at least made to pull back beyond the Litani River, about 15-20 kilometres inside Lebanon, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Otherwise, Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force commandos stationed along the border constantly pose the threat of another October 7-style invasion of the Israeli border communities. 

Despite American and French mediation efforts, the chances that Hezbollah and Israel reach a diplomatic agreement in which Hezbollah will agree to withdraw its forces from the border do not appear high. As Israel heads into a second year of war with both Hamas and the wider Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance”, the security forces thus face the choice of whether to continue with a tit-for-tat response against Hezbollah – which would not enable the 60,000 or so northern residents evacuated from their communities to return home – or to launch a full-scale war to push Hezbollah back, which would likely be bloody and costly. 

Elsewhere, on top of the limited daily attacks from Hezbollah that began on October 8, Israel is also engaged in low intensity wars on several other fronts, which constitute what the Iranian regime has termed a “ring of fire” designed to undermine and eventually destroy the Jewish state. It has come under attack from pro-Iranian proxies in Syria, Iraq and especially Yemen, where the Iranian-backed Houthis have all but shut down the Israeli port of Eilat by targeting shipping in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait leading into the Red Sea. In the cities of the West Bank, Iran and Hezbollah are pumping in weapons and money across the Jordanian border to terror gangs, seeking to open yet another full front to attack Israel. 

Over everything hangs the shadow of all-out war with Iran – which directly attacked Israel for the first time in mid-April – just as Teheran appears close to completing its nuclear weapons program. 

Yet, despite all of the above, the past year has also witnessed Israeli society display remarkable resilience, solidarity and functional continuity. Israel’s hi-tech sector continues to attract significant investment, and while the economy has slowed, growth remains in positive territory.

Nevertheless, it is clear Israeli society and Israel’s economy face myriad unprecedented challenges in the year ahead – with either an all-out war or several ongoing and protracted wars of attrition against Iran’s “ring of fire” looking likely. 

As Israel marks the first anniversary of October 7, the future remains fraught. Maintaining social unity and resilience this year will be vitally important as Jerusalem makes decisions likely to reshape the Jewish state’s future for years and perhaps generations to come.