At 6:29 a.m. on October 7, 2026, a moment of silence was held at Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. Three years earlier, at the same hour, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups crossed into southern Israel. Civilians were targeted in their homes, at military posts and at a music festival.
According to official Israeli figures and an AFP tally, 1,221 people were killed. Haaretz’s records put the toll at 1,209, the majority of them civilians, including 36 children. A total of 251 people were taken hostage. In a country of about 10 million people, 1,200 deaths made it a day far deadlier relative to population than 9/11, a comparison frequently made in Israel. In Kfar Aza alone, 64 residents were killed and 18 were abducted. In Nir Oz, 47 people were killed and 76 were taken into Gaza.
Have the hostages come home?
In a statement on October 6, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the attack as abhorrent, large-scale terror, and wrote that the hostages had been subjected to torture and sexual violence in captivity. He expressed relief for those who had been freed and reunited with their families, and said that those who died in the attack and in captivity must not be forgotten.
This article does not settle on a single tally of the exact number of “remaining hostages” as of publication. Guterres’s statement mentions both those who have returned and those who died in captivity. The return of living hostages was the core of the ceasefire’s first phase, and as that phase ended, the political fight shifted to the question of who agreed to a deal too late.
A year of ceasefire: what has actually stopped
The ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump took effect around October 2025. Nearly a year later, Guterres said there has been relief, but still no safety, no sufficient humanitarian aid and no credible path toward recovery and peace. He called for commitments to be implemented in full and for the next phase of the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.”
According to reporting by The Sydney Morning Herald, an international stabilization force has not yet deployed, and Hamas has not laid down its weapons. Israel’s position is that it will not pull out its troops until disarmament is verified. At the third-anniversary commemoration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be no Hamas rule in Gaza and that Israel would keep targeting those who took part in the attack and in holding hostages.
Casualty figures need to be read source by source. France 24 and others reported figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health authorities of more than 74,200 people killed during the war. A compilation by Jewish Currents lists 74,040 Palestinian deaths and 175,168 injured recorded between October 7, 2023, and September 30, 2026, with 82% of buildings damaged. The Sydney Morning Herald, citing local health authorities, reported about 73,000 killed during the war, plus about 1,500 killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire. These counts do not separate combatants from civilians. The UN has generally considered the Gaza Health Ministry’s wartime figures reliable.
Asmhan Abdalrahim, a 25-year-old Gaza resident, described in a recent interview sleeping in a tent full of insects, and said rodents bite children and the elderly. The ceasefire has reduced large-scale bombardment, but housing, water and medical care have not been restored.
Elections and public opinion
Israel’s general election is a few weeks away. The third-anniversary commemoration is the first official anniversary since the ceasefire, and the battle over responsibility has taken center stage. President Isaac Herzog said the failures must be investigated without bias, and the military’s top commanders said achievements do not diminish accountability. Whether Netanyahu was warned before the attack, and whether he delayed a hostage deal, are already campaign issues.
U.S. public opinion is also different from 2023. In a Gallup poll in February, Americans’ sympathies leaned toward the Palestinians for the first time, and in a Pew survey in March, 60% of U.S. adults held a negative view of Israel, up from 42% before the attack. Within the Democratic Party, halting military aid and imposing sanctions have entered mainstream debate.
How to read this day
The facts of the attack and the facts of the war’s toll do not erase each other. The killing of 1,200 people and the taking of 251 hostages are recorded as terrorism; the deaths in Gaza since then, numbering more than 70,000, and damage to more than 80% of its buildings are separately counted outcomes. What has changed in the third year is not the name of the front line, but the fact that the ceasefire has not led to reconstruction and remains hostage to the election and the conditions for disarmament.
The next turning point is not an anniversary. It is the moment when the sequence — the entry of the stabilization force, Hamas’s weapons and Israel’s withdrawal — is agreed in writing. If the sides split over that sequence, the ceasefire will survive in name only.
한국어 요약
하마스가 2023년 10월 7일 이스라엘 남부를 공격해 약 1,200명이 숨지고 251명이 인질로 끌려간 지 3년이 지났습니다. 트럼프 대통령이 중재한 휴전이 1년 가까이 이어지면서 생존 인질 송환이 중심이던 1단계는 끝났지만, 국제 안정화군 투입·하마스 무장 해제·이스라엘군 철수의 순서는 아직 합의되지 않았습니다. 가자지구에서는 출처에 따라 7만 명 넘는 사망과 80%를 웃도는 건물 피해가 집계됐고, 주민들은 여전히 텐트에서 열악한 생활을 이어가고 있습니다. 몇 주 앞으로 다가온 이스라엘 총선에서는 네타냐후 총리가 사전 경고를 받았는지, 인질 합의를 늦췄는지가 핵심 쟁점으로 떠올랐습니다.
