The southern Lebanese border, the sound of hammers tapping against concrete blocks echoes under the relentless sun. In the kibbutz of Matzuva, northern Israel, a young family is preparing to move into a half-built house equipped with its own bomb shelter. But for Ishay Efroni, the head of security for the regional council that oversees the kibbutz, the family’s move is a source of deep anxiety.
“When they move here, I’m not going to sleep,” Efroni tells. A few months ago, he gave permission for the builders to resume construction on the property, located just a mile-and-a-half from the Lebanese border. By mid-September, Efroni hoped that the family would move in within two months. Yet, in the shadow of ongoing regional conflict, the possibility of them unpacking their belongings feels increasingly distant.
Matzuva, home to about 1,000 residents, was evacuated in the aftermath of the horrific events of October 7, 2023, when Gaza-based Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a coordinated attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages. In response, Israel launched an extensive military campaign in Gaza, vowing to destroy Hamas, which has since resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Despite international calls for peace, the situation remains volatile, with no signs of easing.
A Kibbutz Caught Between Conflict and Hope
Efroni’s concern about resettling families in northern Israel underscores a broader anxiety that grips the entire region. Residents like those in Matzuva were forced to abandon their homes as the conflict escalated, with fears extending beyond Gaza. Israel’s military has engaged in an ongoing exchange of fire with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon. Hezbollah, which has aligned itself with Hamas, poses a significant threat from across the northern border.
The stakes have only risen since Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, and several other senior officials were killed in Israeli strikes. In retaliation, Hezbollah has launched its own attacks, heightening the fear that a full-scale conflict could erupt between Israel and Lebanon. As of late September, near-constant skirmishes along Israel’s northern border have displaced an estimated 200,000 people in southern Lebanon and forced over 60,000 Israelis to flee from their homes in the north.
“Eleven months, nearly a year—what changed?” Efroni asks, pointing to the enduring instability. “Nothing.”
Yet the psychological toll on Israelis in the north may be the most profound change. Sarit Zehavi, a former intelligence officer and head of the Alma Center, a research organization focused on Israel’s northern border, notes that the fear of living under the shadow of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles has deeply affected the region. “Can you tell them to live next to Hezbollah now?” Zehavi asked. With Hezbollah’s anti-tank missiles having a range of about six miles, it’s a gamble most are unwilling to take.
The Trauma of October 7
The massacre of October 7, often referred to as “Israel’s 9/11,” has cast a long shadow over the nation. “We are still in the trauma,” says Michael Milshtein, an expert in Palestinian studies at Tel Aviv University. The psychological scars of the attack remain fresh, and the wounds have made any notion of social recovery or reconciliation seem impossible in the near future. “I don’t think we are able to cure ourselves, or think about reconstruction or coexistence.”
This sense of suspended recovery is particularly intense for the families of those taken hostage by Hamas. While more than 100 hostages were returned during a brief ceasefire in November last year, and a few more have been rescued sporadically during Israeli military operations, as of today, 101 people remain missing in Gaza. The question of their fate weighs heavily on the Israeli collective consciousness.
Nobody expected the hostage situation to drag on for so long. “The worst enemy of these people are obviously the captors, who are keeping them in the tunnels of Hamas,” says Daniel Shek, a former Israeli diplomat and part of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an organization devoted to bringing them home. “But the second worst enemy is forgetfulness. We will not allow these people to be forgotten.”
The uncertainty has become unbearable for the hostages’ families. Colette Avital, a former Israeli ambassador and member of the Knesset, describes the pain of waiting as excruciating. “We need to put as much pressure as possible because time is running out. We don’t know honestly how many of them are still alive.”
Gaza: A Year of Catastrophe
While the situation in Israel is dire, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is overwhelming. After enduring a year of near-constant bombardment, the strip has been devastated. “There is no single word that can describe the past year,” says Sondos Alashqar, a program assistant with Medical Aid for Palestinians, a U.K.-based organization working with medical teams in Gaza.
The destruction in Gaza is nearly unfathomable. “I’m not entirely sure that people grasp or understand the level of destruction that Gaza has endured over the past year,” says Juliette Touma, communications director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Israel has consistently maintained that its strikes targeted Hamas’ infrastructure and leadership, but humanitarian bodies have reported massive civilian casualties and widespread displacement. According to the health authorities in Gaza, over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. The blockade has left Gaza’s population—many of whom have been displaced multiple times—with crippling shortages of food, water, medicine, and other essentials.
At times, the situation has been so dire that Gazans were reportedly forced to eat animal feed to survive. While Israeli officials have denied reports of starvation, claiming that aid is being allowed into Gaza, international agencies have painted a grim picture of the reality on the ground. Flooding from rainstorms in mid-September compounded the suffering, sweeping away tents and forcing already displaced people into even more precarious conditions.
“We sleep in tents—an experience we never dreamed of, not even for fun,” Alashqar says. She recounts the heartbreaking story of a colleague who gave birth amid an evacuation, only to return to a flooded tent with her newborn.
The Human Cost of War
The conflict has taken an enormous toll on humanitarian workers in the region. Organizations operating under the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have lost at least 27 members since October 2023. Meanwhile, 224 UNRWA staff members have been killed in the line of duty.
The safety of humanitarian workers in Gaza has become an acute concern. “Gaza is the most unsafe place in the world to work,” Sigrid Kaag, the U.N.’s senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, said in mid-September. The region is fraught with risk, from direct attacks on facilities to the near-constant threat of airstrikes.
For those trying to deliver aid, the challenges are immense. The logistics of getting food, medicine, and other necessities into Gaza have been repeatedly disrupted by violence, and there are vast swaths of the strip that aid organizations can no longer access. According to UNRWA, the agency was housing more than one million displaced people in makeshift shelters by late 2023. “This war has been like nothing we’ve ever seen in the history of this United Nations agency,” says Touma.
The past year has not only been devastating in human terms, but also in political ones. “It is impossible to overstate the scale of death and destruction in Gaza,” says Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and director of its Program on Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs. “This is at once the deadliest event and the largest forced displacement of Palestinians in their modern history.”
As the war continues, the prospects for a political solution remain dim. Regional actors, including Iran and Hezbollah, have become more deeply entrenched in their positions, further complicating any efforts at diplomacy. Hezbollah’s growing involvement in the conflict, along with Iran’s influence, has fueled fears of a wider regional war that could engulf Lebanon and potentially draw in other countries.
For Israelis, the question of how to navigate the twin threats of Hamas and Hezbollah remains unresolved. And for Palestinians in Gaza, the immediate focus is survival amid one of the worst humanitarian crises the region has ever seen.
One year after the October 7 attacks, the path forward remains fraught for both Israelis and Palestinians. In northern Israel, families like those in Kibbutz Matzuva continue to live with the fear of displacement, unable to safely return to their homes. In Gaza, the situation is equally dire, with millions displaced and in desperate need of aid.
As the world watches, the conflict shows no sign of abating. For families waiting for hostages to return, for those displaced on both sides of the border, and for humanitarian workers risking their lives to provide aid, the trauma of the past year continues to shape daily life. Yet amid the destruction, there remains a sliver of hope that one day, peace might be more than just a distant dream.
