OPINION: How Israel’s deadliest day redefined Middle East politics

Where were you on 7 October 2023? For people of my age (47), it’s a question that sits alongside where you were on 9/11 and, for the truly aged, the Kennedy assassination. I was, perhaps fittingly, in the Middle East. I remember waking up and hearing about a Hamas attack on Israel. I didn’t give it too much thought as it is – unfortunately – a common occurrence. But as the day wore on and the news kept coming in I realised this was something different entirely, both in method and scale.

The day is imprinted on to the psyche of every Israeli and most diaspora Jews as well. It was the bloodiest single day for Jews since the Holocaust, and arguably the single greatest security failure in Israeli history. Jerusalem eventually reported a total of 1,195 people murdered (including the later deaths of hostages in Gaza). Analysis by AFP has found that 815 of these were civilians, including 79 foreign nationals, 282 women, and 36 children. In total 251 people were taken hostages, including 44 from Nova music festival and 74 from kibbutz Nir Oz.

The 7 October atrocities included several violations of international humanitarian law, including deliberate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians, wilful killing of people in custody, cruel and other inhumane treatment, crimes relating to sexual and gender-based violence, mutilation and despoiling of bodies, the use of human shields and pillaging and looting. The UN’s March 2024 report found there were “reasonable grounds” to assume conflict related sexual-violence, including rape and gang-rape, also occurred.

The Israelis then, of course, went into Gaza – as any state was not just likely to do, but duty bound to. Accurate death and injury tolls are hard to come. Gaza death figures come from the Hamas-run Health Ministry and are accordingly not to be trusted (for what it’s worth, their figure is 41,615 killed with 96,359 wounded). It’s also hard to find a public Israeli death toll. In August, the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said 10,000 had been killed or wounded in the fighting, but other than that there is little in the way of concrete figures.

The strategic objectives of destroying Hamas and taking out its system of terror tunnels are equally ambivalent. The IDF has nonetheless also degraded Hamas’s capacity to regroup as a coherent fighting force. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week claimed Israel had “destroyed nearly all of Hamas’ terror battalions – 23 out of 24 battalions” and “over 90% of their rocket arsenal”. It’s an assessment echoed by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War, which assesses that “Israeli operations have defeated or severely degraded Hamas units across the Gaza strip… Hamas units do not appear to be fighting as a cohesive military formation”. In particular, ISW has cited lowering rates of attack from Khan Younis and Rafah to suggest that the IDF has been successful militarily in destroying Hamas in these two Gazan regions.

Set against that is of course a primary goal of the war: the return of the hostages. Of the original 251 hostages, 97 remain in Gaza, their whereabouts and well-being unknown, with Israeli officials claiming that at least 33 are believed to be dead. The majority of those released hostages came through the deal in November in which 105 were freed. At least eight have been rescued alive by the IDF. In December three were killed by the IDF who mistook them for combatants (despite the fact they were holding a white flag).

The other primary war aim of ‘defeating Hamas’ has not happened and will not. The IDF can destroy Hamas’ fighting capability, but the true destruction of Hamas in Gaza can only happen once additional political measures have happened that allow for the formation of a new civilian political authority to govern Gaza. That said, there is much benefit in degrading the fighting capability of a neighbouring enemy possessed of an implacable desire to see you dead.

That’s what we might call a top line assessment of the micro-one-year-on after 7 October. What about the wider picture? Well, that is equally bloody and fraught. Also, you simply cannot consider it without considering Hezbollah and the Houthis with Iran behind them on one side; and the West, led by the United States, on the other.

Simply put, this conflict stands at the centre of regional, and by extension, global geopolitics. And what is happening regionally right now is simply astonishing. Netanyahu knows this. Last week the Israelis killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, prompting Netanyahu to make clear that Israel’s goal to “change the balance of power in the region for years”.

On Monday evening, Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people, telling them you’ll be “free sooner than people think”. Does this mean Israel is going for regime change in Iran? Unlikely. But that is obviously the desired state, and right Israel has the momentum.

I’d be surprised if Jerusalem is up for all-out war with Iran, but they can try to encourage action from within, not least by hinting Israel will act without committing to anything. But for now, the situation is this. Gaza is quiet. Hezbollah has seen 98 percent of its leadership eliminated in the space of two weeks. Iranian deterrence is shot. Revenge for Haniyeh? We’re still waiting for an adequate revenge for the killing of Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani who the Americans droned in January 2020.

Then there is the fact that Iran’s proxies are in utter disarray, there is a strong US naval presence in the region, and all the momentum is with Israel. Could it be time to clean house once and for all?

But start a war with Iran to achieve what? There is a strong argument to take out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the regime planned the security of its programme by learning from the 1981 Israeli strike of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak: a single, above ground reactor.

Iran’s facilities are dispersed across a vast country, installed deep underground, not to mention that Israel would have to fly over the airspace of hostile countries. The assessment remains that Israel does not have the capability to do it. The US does but lacks the appetite.

If a ground offensive into Lebanon is successful, Middle East power dynamics may shift again. If Iran does not directly support Hezbollah in its war against Israel and it is subsequently defeated, its allies across the region will feel betrayed; Iran will look even weaker. If Iran does help and Hezbollah still gets pounded that could be even worse. Israel’s flaw has always been arrogance – especially with Netanyahu at the helm. He may feel it is time to take the war to Tehran.

One year on, all that remains clear is that wider situation is more fraught – and dangerous than ever.

In the interim, all Jews can do one thing at least, when it comes to 7 October. This, at least, should be easy. It’s something we have been called to do for decades, if not centuries to do: never forget.

David Patrikarakos is an author and war correspondent