REIM, Israel — 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 on the day of the attack, families gathered around photos of their killed relatives. They hugged at 6:29 a.m. — the exact time the first rockets were launched three years ago — as booms from explosions in nearby Gaza were heard.
Anya Davitashili, who lost her 25-year-old son, Sean, said she comes to the site every Saturday because 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.”
Hundreds of people came to pay their respects to the more than 350 people killed in and around the festival site.
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 50 meters (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 devastation and ruins
No events are expected Wednesday in Gaza, but Palestinians in the territory said reminders of how much their lives have changed over the past three years are everywhere.
Some 90% of Gaza’s population has experienced displacement, some multiple times.
“We witnessed death, destruction, and bombardment that we had never known before,” said Walid Akram, a Gazy City resident.
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 on Oct. 10 has 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 ongoing hunger crisis, food security experts have said.
Hamas portrayed the Oct. 7 attack as a response to decades of Israeli military occupation, land seizures and settlement construction. But the Palestinians’ dream of an independent state appears even more distant.
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.
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Associated Press journalist Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.