Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday to bring back all hostages still held by Palestinian militants in Gaza as Israel marked the first anniversary of the October 7 attack by Hamas.
“On this day, in this place, and in many places across our country, we remember our dead, our hostages, whom we are obligated to bring back and our heroes who fell in defence of the homeland and the nation. We went through a terrible massacre a year ago,” Netanyahu said.
Netanhayu’s comments came just hours after an Israeli campaign group announced the death of another hostage held in Gaza.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Idan Shtivi, 28, was abducted from the site of the Nova music festival and his “body is still held captive by Hamas.”
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the death of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
More than 41,909 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
With troops fighting what Israel says is a war for its very existence, people gathered at vigils at massacre sites and rallies calling for the return of hostages still in Gaza a year on from their abduction.
President Isaac Herzog began the day with a moment of silence at 6:29 am – the exact time the attack began – at Kibbutz Reim, the site of the Nova music festival where at least 370 people were killed by heavily armed Hamas fighters in the deadliest attack that day.
In the city of Tel Aviv, too, families of hostages and supporters rallied before dawn to call for the return of their loved ones, holding banners and placards bearing their pictures.
The anniversary comes with Israel still fighting in Gaza and engaged in a new war to the north in Lebanon against Hamas ally Hezbollah.
It is also preparing its retaliation against Iran over its missile attack last week, raising fears of all-out regional war.
Hamas and its Lebanese allies vowed to keep fighting, with the Palestinian militants describing their attack as “glorious” and Hezbollah branding Israel as a “cancerous” entity that must be “eliminated.”
Around the world, events were organized to pay tribute to the victims of Hamas’s attack and others to voice support for the Palestinian people after a year of war in the Gaza Strip.
“Coming to this event one year after this terrible massacre that happened on October 7, it’s very touching,” said organizer Solly Laniado at a ceremony on Sunday in Tel Aviv to remember the victims of the Nova attack.
The Israeli army said Monday that at least four projectiles were fired from Gaza just minutes after the commemorations began, adding it had “struck Hamas launch posts and underground terrorist infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement that its fighters had fired rockets at “enemy gatherings” near the border with Gaza.
It later said it had fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv.
The military said sirens sounded Monday in northern and central Israel, which has experienced daily rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza.
In a statement, Herzog said the world “must support Israel in its battle against its enemies.”
In the early hours of October 7, 2023, Hamas launched its attack by firing thousands of rockets towards Israeli border communities.
At the same time Hamas fighters stormed across the border and attacked nearly 50 different sites, including kibbutzim communities, army bases and the Nova music festival.
Militants killed festival-goers en masse and went door-to-door in farming communities, shooting residents dead in their homes.
Hours later, Israel launched a military offensive on Gaza that has reduced swathes of the territory to rubble, and displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million residents at least once amid an unrelenting humanitarian crisis.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated article. Originally posted with the headline “Israel marks first anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack.”
