Israel passes two laws which Western governments fear could have devastating consequences for civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Video from the northern Gaza Strip shows an Israeli tank firing shells at the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

At least 450 people have been killed in an Israeli siege of the northern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military says it is investigating whether its forces in the Gaza Strip have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

One year after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, both sides believe they are winning. The war in Gaza appears poised to continue indefinitely and probably expand, to the apparent delight of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Each must be surveying the wreckage in the region and anticipating the dark days ahead with determination and confidence. Each must think he is playing a sophisticated long game that the other will lose.

This is hardly the first time that the designs of right-wing Israeli leaders have coincided with those of Hamas. Netanyahu has long seen Hamas as a useful tool for weakening Fatah, the secular nationalist party that dominates the Palestinian Authority and rules parts of the West Bank. As he allegedly explained at a Likud strategy meeting in 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Netanyahu denies having said this, but it certainly reflects his actions.)

As an exercise in divide and rule, Netanyahu’s policy succeeded admirably. The Palestinian national movement was crippled by the disunion that Israel fostered like a hothouse orchid. But by foreclosing the possibility of Palestinian statehood or citizenship, the policy created the conditions for a violent backlash, as many Palestinians concluded that the only way to achieve their national aspirations was through armed struggle. In the months leading up to the October 7 attack, Hamas decided to prove that it, and not its rival on the West Bank, was worthy of leading such a movement.

On the evening of October 7, Netanyahu vowed a “mighty vengeance” for Hamas’s killing of 1,139 Israelis and kidnapping of about 250 more. That much Israel has achieved: Israel has now killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled ministry of health, which has published evidence suggesting that most of the dead were civilians, including thousands of children. Yet the war has failed to achieve much else. Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas would be “destroyed.” But this is quixotic; Hamas is more an idea among Palestinians than a collection of individuals or equipment. And Netanyahu’s call for the group’s destruction has allowed Hamas to declare victory simply by surviving.

[Read: The choice America now faces in Iran]

Israel has ravaged Gaza from north to south and wiped out almost everything of value to Hamas—nearly all of its known facilities, agents, associates, and aboveground assets. But the war is not over. In fact, Hamas has only just begun to get the war it really wants.

Hamas is far from being destroyed; its fighters are popping up in areas across the Gaza Strip that months ago the Israeli military had declared pacified and abandoned. Israel is now playing whack-a-mole with militants who emerge for quick attacks before disappearing. When Israel strikes back, it usually leaves a pile of dead civilians behind. Hamas can likely keep this dynamic going for a decade or two—and in doing so, stake its claim to Palestinian leadership by waving the bloodied shirt of martyrdom and preaching the virtues of armed struggle against occupation.

Netanyahu is doing his best to ensure that this happens. He has so far refused to discuss the next phase in Gaza, in which the Israeli military might withdraw and leave someone in charge other than Hamas. In the absence of any such plan, the Israeli military has been left to administer Gaza for the foreseeable future—a role it has begun to acknowledge by appointing one of its own to oversee humanitarian relief efforts. Through inaction, silence, and calculated inattention, Netanyahu has ensured the existence of only two possible candidates to run Gaza: Israel and Hamas.

Everything Netanyahu has done since October 7 has guaranteed Israel’s continuing presence in Gaza, which is exactly what Hamas was counting on. Israel could have declared victory and left after battling the last organized Hamas battalions in Rafah—but it missed that opportunity. Now it is fighting an amorphous and pointless counterinsurgency campaign, from which it can’t withdraw without appearing to throw away a hard-fought victory and hand power back to the enemy.

Hamas hoped for exactly this outcome when it attacked on October 7. It also wished to spark a region-wide, multifront war with Israel, in which other members of the Tehran-led “Axis of Resistance,” especially Hezbollah, would leap into action. The late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah essentially rejected Hamas’s plea, committing only to liberate two small towns still held by the Israelis, and to moderately step up rocket attacks over the border.

But Netanyahu decided to call Nasrallah’s bluff with continuous escalations, which culminated in recent weeks with the killing of numerous Hezbollah leaders, including Nasrallah himself. Israel has killed or maimed nearly 3,000 Hezbollah operatives with booby traps; destroyed much of the group’s heavy equipment, including missiles and rocket launchers; and launched its third major invasion of Lebanon, where a potential Israeli occupation would surely face another open-ended insurgency.

Iran responded to Nasrallah’s killing by sending a barrage of missiles into Israel on October 1. Most failed to cause damage, but the attack has buoyed Hamas’s hopes for a regional war nonetheless. Even the Biden administration, which has sought to restrain escalation in Lebanon, recognizes that Israel will retaliate against Iran. Washington is trying to persuade Israel not to strike Iran’s oil-production facilities or nuclear installations, but these warnings may be in vain, as Israel feels flush with victory and may imagine that it can reshape the region through force.

And so both Israel and Hamas seem to believe that they are on the brink of unparalleled success. Hamas endured the battering in Gaza, and appears confident that it will ultimately assume the Palestinian national leadership. Looking at the same set of facts, the Israeli government apparently believes that it has struck back decisively against the architects of the October 7 attack and reduced Hamas to virtual irrelevancy, beyond being a ragtag nuisance in Gaza. Now Israel is fighting the war it wanted to fight—against Hezbollah in Lebanon—with dramatic early success.

[Read: Lebanon is not a solution for Gaza]

Some in Israel have begun talking about subduing not just Hamas but the whole Axis of Resistance, including Iran itself. Even if Israel doesn’t strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, it may seek to compel the United States to attack those installations in Israel’s defense, or to finish a job that Israel will have started. Netanyahu has long argued that an American military strike is necessary to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If he can’t bring that about today, additional opportunities will surely arise to steer the U.S. into an armed confrontation with Iran, no matter who is in the White House when the time comes.

The Israeli leadership imagines a new Middle East—one where Iran’s nuclear program is eliminated and its regional influence greatly reduced; where Israel becomes part of an alliance of pro-American Arab states, including Saudi Arabia; and where, fantasy of fantasies, the Iranian regime is overthrown. Americans should find something familiar both in this vision of a pacified region and in Israel’s post–October 7 doctrine of “peace through strength” and “escalation to de-escalate.” Washington embraced similar ideas after 9/11, and they met a bitter end in Iraq.

Both Israel and Hamas are probably kidding themselves. Sooner rather than later, Palestinians will come to resent Hamas’s brutal recklessness, which has led to more Palestinian bloodshed even than the catastrophe of 1948. The attack on October 7 did incalculable damage to the Palestinian national movement and prospects for statehood. And if Hamas dreams that it can ever take over the Palestine Liberation Organization and speak for its people at the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, the group has not comprehended how radioactive it has become internationally. Playing the long game of insurgency may win the sympathies of many Palestinians, but overcoming the stigma of October 7 will require renouncing terrorism—something that Hamas can’t do without completely transforming its ideology and leadership.

Israel, too, may be facing a rude awakening. Its degradation of Hezbollah, which Iran sees as its forward defense force, may persuade Tehran to sprint toward nuclear weaponization. Attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities could set this process back a year or two, but Iran will surely succeed if that becomes the regime’s single-minded goal. Neither Israel, the United States, nor Arab countries can do much to force regime change in Iran if domestic conditions are not ripe for it—and there’s no sign that they are. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has made clear that it will not normalize relations with Israel, let alone enter into a partnership, unless the Palestinian issue is resolved. No amount of Israeli military success will change that.

Netanyahu’s war of vengeance in Gaza has ensured that yet another generation of Arabs regards the Palestinian cause as a collective responsibility—one that may give rise to or strengthen extremist groups. Yet Israel appears more hostile to Palestinian statehood than ever, as it steadily annexes much of the West Bank with no plan for what to do with the Palestinians there.

[Read: ’It’s an earthquake’]

After October 7, Israel unleashed its military in search of greater security, and many Israelis appear to feel that the project could hardly be going better. But Israel now finds itself fighting one insurgency to its south, in Gaza, and marching briskly toward another such quagmire to its north, if it occupies Lebanon. Its hostility toward the Palestinian Authority and violent clashes with armed youth in Palestinian cities suggest a third insurgency developing to its east. If that’s a formula for security, it’s hard to imagine what insecurity would look like.

One year on from October 7, Hamas and Israel both think events are moving in their direction. Any appreciation of the old adage about being careful what you wish for was, perhaps, one of the most significant victims of October 7.

A visual guide to how much has changed in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its military response to Hamas's attacks on 7 October.

The day started with a whistle—a short, loud shriek coming through our bedroom window. I didn’t wake up; the noise, otherworldly but familiar, blended into my dreams. Miri, my wife, was quicker to realize the danger: “Amir, wake up, a mortar!” We leaped out of bed and sprinted down the hall toward our safe room, a thick concrete bunker, wearing only underwear.

Every house in our kibbutz, Nahal Oz, has a safe room. We live less than a mile from the border with the Gaza Strip—close enough that Israel’s Iron Dome doesn’t have time to intercept artillery aimed at us. When Hamas launches a mortar, we have seven seconds before it lands.

As soon as we shut the heavy iron door, an explosion shook the house. Then a second, and a third. Our two daughters, who sleep in the safe room, had been through this many times before. Three-year-old Galia didn’t even stir. Carmel, nearly 2, raised her head but fell back asleep once she found her pacifier.

This article has been adapted from Tibon’s new book.

It was 6:30. Miri and I took out our phones and quickly discovered that Hamas was firing on dozens of locations across Israel. Whenever violence breaks out, we immediately start packing suitcases so that we can leave the kibbutz at the first moment of quiet. Israel and Hamas would typically announce a cease-fire within 10 days, at which point we’d return and get on with our lives.

But as we were packing, Miri and I heard a sound that told us this time would be different: gunfire. It started in the fields and steadily got closer. Then we heard shouting in Arabic outside our house—a commander telling one of his men to try to break in.

We had woken up to a nightmare: The border had been breached. Hamas was here.

When we moved to Nahal Oz in 2014, no word terrified us more than tunnel. Earlier that year, Hamas had used its extensive underground network to cross the border and kill Israeli soldiers. In response, the government invested more than $1 billion in an underground border wall, digging as deep as 160 feet. Any threat of an invasion had apparently been eliminated: The military began withdrawing soldiers from the borderlands, including from the base a few minutes’ drive from our home. The aboveground border fence, equipped with security cameras and machine guns, was supposed to be impenetrable.

On the morning of October 7, fewer than four full battalions guarded the border with Gaza. (Compare that with the roughly 25 battalions posted in the West Bank.) About 200 soldiers were stationed at the nearby base. It wasn’t nearly enough. Thousands of Hamas fighters bulldozed, blew up, and broke through the fence. Drones had prepared the way by destroying its guns and cameras. By 8:30 a.m., terrorists had captured the base, killing dozens of soldiers. In recent weeks, those soldiers had told their commanders that they had seen Hamas storming large-scale models of Israeli kibbutzim—an obvious dress rehearsal. But their warnings were dismissed. Israel’s leaders didn’t think Hamas would be willing to start a war.

[Read: ‘We’re going to die here’]

Even with the local base out of commission, Nahal Oz wasn’t entirely undefended. The kibbutz has a small security team that was heading off Hamas despite being outnumbered. But there was no chance of a military force arriving quickly enough to save us from the immediate danger. Mercifully, perhaps, Miri and I remained unaware. All we could do was wait.

Within minutes of the base being overrun, I got a call from my father. Cell reception in the safe room was spotty—it would soon go out for good—but I had been able to text him explaining that we were trapped. Our call was brief. He offered me the only words of hope that I would hear for hours: “We’re coming to get you out of there.”

While my mother drove him from Tel Aviv, my father, a retired army general, called all the senior military officials he knew—the army’s chief of staff, the head of the Southern Command, the commander of the Gaza regional division. None answered, so he texted instead, warning them that terrorists were inside Nahal Oz. He received just one response: “I know.”

Rockets flew overhead as my parents entered the border region. My father put down his phone and took out a pistol. Once they got to Sderot, about 15 minutes from Nahal Oz, they saw a police cruiser parked sideways, blocking the highway. Policemen took cover behind it, shooting at some enemy my parents couldn’t see. My mother was preparing to make a U-turn when a young couple darted in front of the car. They were out of breath and—as my father recalled—“dressed for a party.” He and my mother hurriedly let them in.

As my mother drove away, the couple told my parents that they had come from a music festival. “They shot everyone,” the woman exclaimed. “Everyone’s dead.” My parents listened in terror, imagining what might be happening to us in Nahal Oz. They drove the young couple to safety and turned back for the border.

The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on the music festival (Jack Guez / AFP / Getty)

About eight miles from Nahal Oz, my mother suddenly stopped the car in disbelief. Dozens of corpses covered the highway: Israeli soldiers and policemen, civilians, Hamas fighters. Most of the cars were charred; some were overturned. Others were still running but empty inside. My father was stunned. He had served in the Israel Defense Forces for more than three decades, even operating behind enemy lines. And yet, he told me, “I’ve never seen so much death in one place before.” My mother nosed the car forward, slowly steering between bodies.

Within a few minutes, at around 10:30 a.m., my parents had to stop again. They had driven into their second firefight of the day. A soldier directed them to take cover in a nearby bomb shelter, where they discovered a heap of mutilated remains: Hamas had chased Israelis there from the festival and thrown in grenades.

As my parents walked outside in horror, three armored vehicles carrying Israeli special forces were approaching. My father was able to persuade one of the officers, Avi, to go with him to Nahal Oz. My mother stayed behind, knowing that the next phase of the journey would be the most dangerous.

Meanwhile, Miri and I were desperately trying to keep the girls quiet. We pretended to be calm for their sakes, knowing that Hamas fighters might be close enough to hear them if they cried. But around noon, when Galia and Carmel fell back asleep, we stopped pretending. The military still hadn’t come, and we had lost contact with my father. I whispered to Miri that this was all my fault; it had been my idea to live in Nahal Oz. She tried to console me, saying that she loved our life here. “We both chose this place.”

Then, briefly, my cell reception returned. It was my mother: “Dad is getting closer to you.”

My father and Avi were two miles from the border when they heard shots up ahead. Hamas fighters had ambushed a group of IDF soldiers and pinned them behind their Jeep Wrangler. My father and Avi jumped out of their car and ran toward the soldiers. A brigade of Israeli paratroopers arrived at the same time, opening fire on the Hamas fighters as my father made it to the Wrangler. He found five commandos there—two on his right pleaded for ammunition; three on his left stayed silent. Once he realized they were dead, he stripped their ammo and threw it to the survivors. Then he took an M16 for himself and killed a Hamas fighter who was rushing the car. The Israeli soldiers shot at the ambushers until the enemy fire abated. Silence fell over the forest, and one of the paratroopers announced that he’d been hit. My father ran over and saw that he’d been struck in the stomach.

[Franklin Foer: The war that would not end]

By now my father understood, based on all the violence he’d seen, that reinforcements had not likely gotten to Nahal Oz. He faced a painful decision: The kibbutz lay within reach, but the paratrooper wouldn’t survive unless he was evacuated immediately.

My father made the right choice. He saved the soldier, taking him back to my mother, while Avi and the others stayed behind to hunt for remaining Hamas fighters. She drove the paratrooper to a nearby hospital, leaving my father stranded without a car. By some miracle, he ran into a general he knew, Israel Ziv, who agreed to drive him to Nahal Oz.

Their way was clear. More than six hours after leaving home, my father reached the kibbutz. Along the perimeter fence, he encountered a group of soldiers who agreed to let him join their command. An armored vehicle pulled up, carrying the local security team that had been defending Nahal Oz on its own all day. My father listened anxiously as they reported that roughly two dozen Hamas fighters remained in the kibbutz. The terrorists had broken into at least several homes, but the security team didn’t know how many. Then another group of IDF soldiers arrived, making my father one of about 70 fighters assembled on the eastern edge of Nahal Oz. They divided themselves into teams and started searching every building in the kibbutz.

Smoke rises from the Gaza Strip on January 30, 2024, seen behind a gap in the fence bordering Nahal Oz. (Sam McNeil / AP)

It was now around 2 p.m., but Miri and I had no way of knowing. Our phones had long since died, and the room was too dark for me to read my watch. The only light came from Carmel’s glow-in-the-dark pacifiers.

We heard gunfire again, this time in the distance: short, disciplined bursts, nothing like Hamas’s wild shooting from the morning. Miri and I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe the military had finally come.

Making his way through the kibbutz, my father saw bodies everywhere: in the road, in yards, in driveways, in houses. Most were Hamas fighters. Many still held their weapons. By 4 p.m., he had reached our property. Everything in sight had bullet holes—the house, our two cars, our stroller. A dead terrorist lay on the front porch with a rocket-propelled grenade in his hand, pointed at our next-door neighbors. Two others blocked the sidewalk in front of our door. Another had died next to our lemon tree.

My father walked up to the exterior wall of the safe room, took a deep breath, and smacked the covered window. We heard a bang and then a familiar voice. The air inside was hot and thick by then; we worried that we were running out of oxygen. Galia was the first to speak. “Saba is here,” she said simply, using the Hebrew word for grandfather. I could hear the exhaustion in her voice, but for the first time in hours, she sounded happy.

My father shouted for us to open the front door. It took me a second to start moving. I imagined a terrorist hiding in the house, waiting for me to emerge. Slowly I felt my way through the darkness and opened the safe-room door. The light was overwhelming. I covered my eyes and crept to the front of the house toward my father. We embraced as soon as he stepped in the door. For a few moments, we stood there silently, holding each other.

By evening, the soldiers had finished searching the kibbutz and killed almost 30 Hamas fighters. They had found the bodies of 15 of our neighbors, including a family who were clinging to one another in their safe room when terrorists broke in.

The kibbutz would be evacuated soon, but in the meantime, the soldiers began assembling survivors in our house. By 7 p.m., we had more than 40 people inside, including about 10 young children huddled in the safe room. Rumor spread that those of us who were missing had been kidnapped and smuggled into Gaza.

In the midst of all this, Ruti, a woman who lived across the street, asked Miri where she could find a pot for cooking. Miri seemed confused: “What are you talking about?” But Ruti insisted. “I know we’ve all had a very long day, but there are 10 children sitting in that little room, and they need to have dinner.”

Miri accompanied Ruti to the kitchen. With the help of another neighbor, they made pasta for everyone in the house. As I watched people eating—the children in the safe room, their parents in the living room, and the soldiers on the porch, visible through the cracks that bullets had left in our windows—I realized that Ruti was doing more than feeding us. She was telling us, in very few words, that because we were alive, we were going to have to live.

This article has been adapted from Amir Tibon’s new book, The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands.