Moshe Mayzlesh’s Oct. 7 began the same way it did a year ago, with him dashing down the stairs into the basement shelter under his home in this religious community on the edge of Tel Aviv.
A year ago, Kfar Chabad was unscathed by the mass launching of Hamas rockets that preceded the group’s invasion of southern Israel, an attack that left almost 1,200 people dead. On the anniversary Monday, the war came to Kfar Chabad as a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip crashed into a warehouse a few dozen metres from Mr. Mayzlesh’s home, shattering a window above the shel west coast weed ter where he and his wife were taking cover with four children from the daycare she runs.
“Unfortunately, every day, until this ends, you have to expect something. They’ve never stopped trying to target us, trying to harm us,” said Mr. Mayzlesh, a 46-year-old information technology professional. “This is not a way to live.”
Hamas fired a total of five rockets on Monday toward Tel Aviv in what was a show of defiance by the group after a year of warfare that has destroyed much of the group’s fighting capability while reducing much of the Gaza Strip to rubble. Two of the missiles got through Israel’s air defences and a pair of women were lightly injured by shrapnel in Kfar Chabad.
The barrage was the heaviest launched by Hamas since Israel last month switched its military focus to Lebanon and combatting Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas that began launching rockets at Israel on Oct. 8 of last year in what it said was an act of “solidarity” with Hamas.
“Israel during the last three weeks tried to convince the world that the Gaza issue was finished. These rockets tell the opposite,” said Wasif Iriqat, a military analyst based in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abu Obeidah, a spokesman for Hamas vowed Monday that the fighting would continue. “Our choice is to continue a long and painful battle of attrition with the enemy,” he said in a video statement marking the anniversary.
After the Tel Aviv attack, the Gaza-based al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights reported that Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for Khan Yunis, the city in southern Gaza where the rockets were fired from. A separate warning called for Gazans to evacuate the north of Gaza, as Israel looked set to once more escalate operations in the narrow coastal territory.
The Israeli military said afterwards that it had s lemon drop strain truck the launch site in Khan Yunis. “During the strike, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of weapons,” it said in a statement.
On the northern front, Hezbollah launched 140 rockets at Israel over the course of Monday – most were either intercepted or fell in open areas of northern Israel – while Israel continued to pound southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut with air strikes as part of its campaign to push Hezbollah away from the Israeli border.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an emergency meeting of his security cabinet following the launches from Gaza and Lebanon. Later in the day, Yemen’s Houthi rebels also launched an attack on Israel, firing a long-range ballistic missile that was intercepted on its way to Tel Aviv. All three of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are backed by Iran, which itself launched a wave of missiles at Israel last week in what it said was retribution for Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.
The threat of a wider war l thechronfather ooms large as Israel has vowed to strike back at Iran in the days ahead.
A year of war in Gaza has left more than 41,800 people dead, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, including 12 who were reportedly killed in Monday’s attacks. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says more than 1.9 million people – 90 per cent of Gaza’s population – have been forced to leave their homes at least once over the past year, and over 60 per cent of all buildings in the strip have been damaged in the fighting.
Karim Khan, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, is seeking arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – as well as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – over alleged war crimes committed on and since Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas took some 250 Israelis and foreigners hostage during the attack last year, 101 of who mail order hash canada m are still missing in Gaza, according to a count by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. At least 35 of that number are believed to have died in captivity.
On Monday, relatives of the missing gathered – along with some of the hostages released or rescued over the past year – at Tel Aviv’s central HaYarkon Park to mark the anniversary, and to call for Mr. Netanyahu’s government to bring them home via a ceasefire agreement.
“Hamas has already been destroyed in Gaza. Who cares what they want? It doesn’t matter. We should be making a deal now to get the 101 hostages home now,” said Menachem Getz, the uncle of Omer Neutra, a 22-year-old Israeli-American who was serving as a tank commander in the Israeli army and taken hostage on Oct. 7. The family hasn’t re mail order hash canada ceived any proof of life since then.
The memorial ceremony, too, was rattled by sirens late Monday after the Houthis launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv from more than 2,000 kilometres away in Yemen. Families of the Oct. 7 victims were forced to take cover until the red alert was lifted 10 minutes later, after the missile was shot down by Israel’s air defences.
Among those diving to the ground was Adi Zakuto, whose father Avi, a 53-year-old supermarket manager in the city of Ofakim, was murdered in his home on Oct. 7. Adi, a 25-year-old medical student, said she had come to the Tel Aviv memorial on Monday “to feel the love, to be with other families that feel the same as we do.”
But a year later, the war that began that day continues to rage and to expand. “This is unbelievable,” Adi said after dusting herself off from the red alert. “I don’t know what to say.”