Monday Briefing: Reflecting on a Year of War

It’s been a year since the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, when officials say 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 more were kidnapped. Since then, health officials say more than 41,000 Palestinians, many of them civilians and children, have been killed in the subsequent war. The fighting has widened to three fronts, and the path to reaching a cease-fire seems uncertain. To reflect on the past year of war in the Middle East, I spoke to Isabel Kershner, who has been covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs for decades and is based in Jerusalem.

You wrote yesterday about fear overtaking memorial preparations in Israel. Can you describe the mood over the past few days?

The mood in Israel in the run-up to the one-year mark is grim, to say the least. Instead of some sense of closure, the expanding war augurs more difficult days ahead.

Reflecting on the past year, what do you recall?

Soon after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, a seasoned colonel in the military reserves told me that Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza, a narrow coastal strip, would take at least a year, or two, or three.

At the time, I found that hard to believe. A year on, that long war has broadened and intensified on several other fronts, with no end in sight, only a bottomless pit of suffering.

Any distraction in life or work feels frivolous or inappropriate. In a region engulfed in so much grief, loss and yearning, there is no room for celebrations. Birthdays are marked, religious festivals observed. Any personal pain is relative, always measured against the vast scale of the anguish of others.