PART ONE
On the ground in Kiryat Gat, Israel

For the past year, it’s almost become a daily ritual for Jonathan Dekel-Chen. He’s only able to get out of bed once he convinces himself:

There are important things that need to be done for the hostages or for my family.

It’s become his single-minded focus. His son Sagui Dekel-Chen, a husband and father to three daughters, is currently among the 101 hostages still held in captivity as Israel continues to pursue its goal of destroying Hamas throughout Gaza.

“Life has become very small,” says Mr. Dekel-Chen, a leading scholar of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Eighty percent of my waking hours are just focused on working and advocating for the hostages, and the other 20% is focused on my kids and grandkids. Nothing else exists.”

It’s mid-September in Kiryat Gat, a small, working-class city that skirts the Negev Desert in southern Israel. The late summer air is thick with humidity and sadness as Mr. Dekel-Chen prepares to attend a scheduled protest. He’s put on a black T-shirt emblazoned with white and red Hebrew words: “Bring them home. Now.”

Debbie Hill/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Jonathan Dekel-Chen stands near photos of hostages still held in Gaza, before a protest Sept. 14, 2024, in Kiryat Gat, Israel.

The slogan has become an ever-present part of a burgeoning protest movement throughout Israel. There have been protests every week in Kiryat Gat as people demand the Israeli government reach a deal to free the remaining hostages and cease the devastating and ongoing ground operation against Hamas in Gaza.

The protest is especially packed this day. There’s a feeling of rage among many in attendance. Officials announced that week that Israeli soldiers recovered the bodies of six young hostages in a cramped, underground tunnel in Gaza. They had been executed by Hamas before the soldiers converged. Can there be any hope to bring the others home?

Hope. That’s the daily reminder. That’s what exists for Mr. Dekel-Chen now.

There are important things that need to be done for the hostages or for my family.

He was born and raised in Connecticut before he emigrated to Israel alone as a young man in 1981. He built a new life, settling in Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small farming collective in the northwestern Negev. It was known for its asparagus – and was just 14 miles from the Gaza border.

He became a well-known scholar living in Nir Oz while teaching in Jerusalem. He and his wife, Neomit, who later divorced, raised four children in this small desert kibbutz, where a number of longtime peace activists also resided. The Dekel-Chen clan expanded to include grandchildren, and the family made a home in a place they treasured as a “paradise” – even if it did endure increasing rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza over the years.

Oded Balilty/AP

Bullet holes cover the bedroom wall of 4-year-old Ariel Bibas in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel. Hamas militants abducted Ariel; his 3-month-old brother, Kfir; and their parents, Shiri and Yarden Bibas, on Oct. 7, 2023.

On the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, when Mr. Dekel-Chen was away, it was his son Sagui who first spotted Hamas fighters breaking into Nir Oz. He quickly alerted fellow residents and rushed home to his then-pregnant wife, Avital, and their two little girls.

Once he secured them in their safe room, he joined up with a security team of neighbors. They had been trained to keep the community of 400 residents secure in an emergency for a maximum of 15 minutes. By then, according to their training, the Israeli army was supposed to rush there to defend them.

It took seven hours for defense forces to arrive that day. When they did, soldiers found Hamas fighters had murdered 46 residents. They also found that 79 others were taken as hostages, including a 9-month-old, an 85-year-old, and the younger Mr. Dekel-Chen. Hostages taken from Nir Oz made up about a third of the total number abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Mr. Dekel-Chen’s ex-wife, Neomit, was also taken. An Israeli helicopter, however, attacked the truck taking her toward Gaza. She was wounded, but she was able to escape. Their daughter-in-law, Avital, and their granddaughters were also able to remain hidden and survive the attack.

“It’s not just that our loved ones were killed or taken hostage – and all of the fears that involves, which are enormous, unthinkable, unspeakable,” says Mr. Dekel-Chen.

“We have our entire extended family of hostages, all of them deeply intertwined in my life for 10, 20, 30, 40 years,” he continues. “Home and property. Gone. Way of life. Gone. An entire community shattered and absolutely no certainty about the future.”

The surviving Nir Oz community members are now scattered in high-rise buildings in Kiryat Gat. They expect to be here for the next three years.

Mr. Dekel-Chen does still have one escape, however: teaching. “Six hours a week during the school year, when I’m in class talking about Russia in the 19th century or migration patterns in the 20th century, I don’t have to think about this living hell that we inhabit now.”

Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

Thousands attend a protest against the Israeli government demanding a focus on bringing hostages home, Sept. 14, 2024, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

As a parent of a hostage, he has met with U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, advocating for the priority of bringing the hostages home.

Like most hostage families and a significant number of Israelis, he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has abandoned the hostages. He believes the government Mr. Netanyahu leads is “a radical messianic coalition” that prefers to torpedo diplomatic efforts and to prolong the war as a means of staying in power.

“It’s very difficult to find any joy in anything,” says Mr. Dekel-Chen. “It’s a totality of loss.”

The large protest in Kiryat Gat, it turned out, unfolded the same night 750,000 other Israelis took to the streets across the country to call for efforts to bring the hostages home.

At many protests, people talked about a basic covenant in Israel that seemed to have been shattered. Israelis were supposed to always look after one another, to “leave no one behind.”

Afterward, friends approach the reserved historian of the Jewish people, a man who typically eschews emotional displays, preferring analysis over feelings.

They shake Mr. Dekel-Chen’s hand, offering implicit solidarity with his single-minded focus:

There are important things that need to be done for the hostages or for my family.

He nods, mutely. Then he adds, “I want my boy home.”

Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images

A man holds a Palestinian flag after the Israeli army withdrew from the eastern part of Deir al-Balah in Gaza, Aug. 29, 2024.

One year after October 7: An altered Middle East – and world

In the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco normalized relations with Israel, seeking the economic benefits of peace. Saudi Arabia, one of the most influential Muslim countries in the world, was considering doing the same.

The Palestinian cause had been moved down the list of regional, if not global, priorities. In Israel the issue receded into the background. Security barriers physically sealed off the West Bank. An ostensibly impregnable set of border defenses in the south kept Hamas at bay, interrupted by more limited, although still painful, Israeli military operations. The idea of a two-state solution was, if not dead, dormant and out of mind, even for Israelis who supported it.

Then Hamas fighters broke through the sophisticated barriers. They massacred 1,200 people, most of them civilians in domestic places, including a music festival. They took some 250 more as hostages, including infants and older people.

Israel has responded overwhelmingly, laying waste to most of Gaza in a campaign that has killed over 40,000 people, according to Hamas health services, a significant number of them children. Hundreds of thousands have been left without homes and basic necessities.

On Oct. 7, the momentum toward stability came to a sudden halt. And as history moves in the opposite direction, the plight of the Palestinian people is once again a global concern.

Ghad Abdulfattah

AbdulKarim Monir Al Ghorra, known as “Abood,” holds water cans near tents in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Aug. 31, 2024.

PART TWO
On the ground in Deir al-Balah, Gaza

One year ago, AbdulKarim Monir Al Ghorra, known by friends and family as “Abood,” had “dreams as vast as the sky above the Gaza Strip,” he says.

He was going to be a doctor, he was sure. Science and engineering were his best subjects, and in his 11th grade exams at the highly competitive Al Azhary Secondary School in Gaza City, he scored 99% on all his finals.

Part of his success as a student had to do with his discipline. He adopted a strict regimen of waking up before dawn and studying mathematics and physics for two hours before school. To minimize distractions, Abood deactivated his social media accounts, including his most-used: Facebook and Instagram.

When the war erupted in October 2023, Abood continued studying as bombs echoed around their home in Gaza City. When the Israeli military ordered his family to evacuate, they had to leave. “I asked my mother to take my books, but she reassured me, ‘It won’t be long. Don’t worry,’” he says.

His mother, Manal Al Ghorra, adds, “We hoped the war would end in October, then November, then December. We wanted to believe that by June, students would be able to resume their studies and take their exams.” Abood was getting ready to take the Tawjihi – the final senior year exams that would dictate his university admission and the field he qualified to study.

Dreams, especially those as vast as the sky above the Gaza Strip, can be fragile. This war has shattered everything he knew. At least five of his classmates have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City. Another lost his legs. “We used to teach each other, spend breaks together, and enjoy spare time,” he says about his classmates.

Now, instead of doing his prewar ritual of waking up early to study, Abood wakes up early to wait in line where aid organizations distribute precious water, hoping to secure a few gallons for his family. He then searches for wood scraps in the empty lot surrounding their tent to use as cooking fuel.

Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

Palestinians inspect their apartments after their building was destroyed during Israeli bombings on Deir al-Balah, Aug. 29, 2024.

A catastrophe in Gaza: “The trauma is ongoing”

For 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza and tens of thousands more in the West Bank, Oct. 7 is more than the date of an attack, a war, or a catastrophe – it is a dividing line between two lives.

In some ways, Oct. 7 is a beginning – the start of hardships none had before imagined possible and that continue to upend, interrupt, and disrupt lives across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank today.

These are the daily challenges not easily captured in the 40,000 dead, 90,000 wounded, thousands missing, and more than 80,000 housing units destroyed, according to a United Nations report.

Even should the war end today, Palestinians say they have no idea what life, and which loved ones, they will still have.

“Anyone who called Gaza home on Oct. 6 will never go back to what was there then,” says Yara Asi, assistant professor of global health at the University of Central Florida, and a researcher of trauma among Palestinians.

“Some people’s bodies have been irreparably damaged; some families have been separated; some have lost large swaths of their families,” says Dr. Asi, author of “How War Kills: The Overlooked Threats to Our Health.”

“Even if the violence stopped today, people will still be living in camps, living with amputated limbs. We don’t have the language to describe this ongoing chronic trauma. There is no post-trauma. The trauma is ongoing.”

Ghada Abdulfattah

Iqbal Abu Qumsan sits with her grandchildren in a tarp tent in Deir al-Balah, Aug. 25, 2024.

“I have lost everything”: Life in Gaza’s city of makeshift tents

Not too far from the tent where Abood and his mother are sheltering, Iqbal Abu Qumsan is trying to sell vegetables in a small Deir al-Balah market.

Most of her customers don’t have the money even for a small bag of potatoes, tomatoes, and an onion. So she writes their names and amount owed in a ledger, even though she knows many will never be able to pay.

Ms. Abu Qumsan lives in her own makeshift tarp tent with four of her seven children. They have little access to water and no electricity in this sweltering seaside town in central Gaza once known for its date palms, from which it derives its name.

This is the fifth time she and her remaining family have been displaced since Oct. 7. It’s sometimes hard to remember her life before that date one year ago, she says.

In 1989, she married Jamal Abu Qumsan, who became a local police officer. They built a life together at the Jabalia refugee camp, an enormous residential area established by the United Nations in 1948 to provide a place for Palestinians forced from their homes after the declaration of the state of Israel – a moment Palestinians call Nakba, meaning “catastrophe.”

Over the decades, the Jabalia camp evolved into a city of nearly 100,000 residents in the early 2000s. As the couple raised their seven children, who eventually began to have children of their own, they purchased what Ms. Abu Qumsan calls her “dream home” – a three-story building in which the extended clan could live together.

“I wanted to grow old while I have my children around me,” she says. “My husband and I always wanted a house to accommodate everyone.”

After they purchased their home, Ms. Abu Qumsan became a busy matriarch tending after her clan. She had a familiar, and ancient, domestic routine: She went to the market. She cooked. She looked after her children and grandchildren, who lived in the apartments above her.

After Oct. 7, this life she knew so well for decades ended. Her “dream home.” Gone. Her neighborhood. Reduced to rubble. Her husband. Killed.

Ghada Abdulfattah

Iqbal Abu Qumsan negotiates with buyers as she sells vegetables in the tent camp. Most customers do not have money, so she writes down their names and amount owed in a ledger, knowing that many cannot pay.

He had stayed behind in the Jabalia camp after the family was forced to flee in December. Determined to stay with the house, he was killed after an Israeli missile strike destroyed their three-story house – as well as most of the 75-year-old camp originally built for Palestinian refugees.

“I sometimes want to talk to him, ask him what to do, where to go,” she says inside her tent. “But I can’t.” She averts her gaze and discreetly rubs her eyes inside her tent so her daughters do not see her tears. “I had a family to help, a home, a husband who supported us,” she says. “I have lost everything.”

The rest of her family is now scattered across the Gaza Strip – separated by evacuations, Israeli military checkpoints, and the ravages of war.

Still, the matriarch of the Abu Qumsan clan hasn’t stopped working tirelessly for her family.

After she was displaced from her home in Jabalia, she decided to salvage pans and start a business in the city of Rafah. She supported the children with her by selling cheese, corned beef, and za’atar pastries, charging a handful of shekels each – an amount equivalent to $1.

As the war dragged on, ingredients became scarce and prohibitively expensive, however. And when Israel began its offensive into Rafah in May, she was forced to flee with her children, again. She had to abandon everything she had worked hard to build, again.

“I left the trays I bought. I left every ingredient I bought when I started baking,” Ms. Abu Qumsan says.

Now in the tent city in Deir al-Balah, her fifth refuge since Oct. 7, she uses some of the money she earned in her previous shelters to purchase vegetables from traders in the large market downtown. She then resells them in an area near her tent. Her ledger of those unable to pay is growing.

Ms. Abu Qumsan says she is waiting for a day of hope. Right now, all she can do is try to help the children still with her survive.

“I long to be reunited with my children in north Gaza. It has been months since I last saw them, and every day apart feels like an eternity,” she says. “I do not want to lose them like I lost their father. I just want to hold them close to me again.”

The young displaced high school student Abood, meanwhile, says he will not abandon his desire to attend medical school, no matter how many years it takes. There’s a future, and the high achiever is determined to be a part of it.

“Before, my dream was to become a doctor to help people,” Abood says from his tent in another part of Deir al-Balah. “After seeing how doctors were needed in this war, I still very much want to become one.”

Ramadan Abed/Reuters

Displaced Palestinians shelter at a tent camp in Deir al-Balah, Sept. 4, 2024.

PART THREE
On the ground in Qarawat Bani Hassan, West Bank

On Dec. 3, 2023, Noor Assi was a student in the ninth grade, spending much of his afternoon playing soccer with cousins and friends on the streets of his village, Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the western part of the
Israeli-occupied West Bank.

That day, a group of far-right Israeli settlers suddenly attacked the village of about 5,000 Palestinians. It was less than two months after the Hamas-led attack on Israel. The settlers swept down upon Qarawat Bani Hassan, burning cars, setting homes ablaze, and shooting residents.

Hours after the attack, the body of Noor’s father, Ahmed Assi, was discovered in an olive grove on the outskirts of the village. He had been shot to death.

Nearly 700 people have been killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank in 2024, the deadliest year for Palestinians living there since the U.N. began recording in 2005. Attacks by far-right Israeli settlers, often accompanied by the Israeli military, have so far displaced 14 Palestinian communities and have uprooted about 3,000 people.

As the people of Gaza experience massive destruction, waves of deadly settler violence and Israeli military crackdowns on suspected militants have created a besieged, wartime atmosphere in the West Bank.

The 15-year-old, who wanted to become an architect, immediately dropped out of school to work as a carpenter to support his mother and siblings.

“I am responsible for them now,” Noor says. His hands move swiftly in one of the village’s shops, putting the finishing touches to a white wooden dresser. He wraps it in plastic and prepares it for delivery. “I’m trying my best to fill this need, to be like my father,” he says.

“The bullet that took my father’s life changed my life,” Noor says. “I feel like I have aged 10 or maybe 15 years in one day. This is what the war has done to me and the youths of Gaza alike.”

Often feeling overwhelmed, he talks to his deceased father at night when he is alone in his room. “I imagine him sitting with me, and I share everything with him. This helps me feel connected to him and act upon his advice,” Noor says.

His cousin Ibrahim Assi, the mayor of Qarawat Bani Hassan, echoes what many other Palestinians and Israelis often say: “The West Bank is a living nightmare at the moment, without safety or security, because of this settler government’s violence.”

One year after October 7: The altered geopolitics of the Middle East

Before Oct. 7, even Palestinian leaders seemed to accept that the idea of an independent Palestine was not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

The United States, which favors a two-state solution, had in many ways begun to disengage from the Middle East, rebalancing its priorities and resources more toward China and the Asia-Pacific.

But the destruction of the Gaza Strip and the suffering of its people has now upended the geopolitics of the Middle East and beyond. A two-state solution once again seems essential to any geopolitical discussion about the future of the Palestinian territories.

And the urgency of the conflict after Oct. 7 now demands U.S. attention like never before. Its influence will be crucial among discussions of some kind of “Arab Marshall Plan” that would focus on the reconstruction of homes, hospitals, and critical infrastructure.

But rebuilding Gaza will require more than bricks and mortar. It will require a reimagining of its political and social order – a task that no amount of foreign aid alone can accomplish.

Adding to the diplomatic complexity is the growing relationship between Iran and Russia. The two countries were already drawing closer together as Iran began to provide attack drones for Russia in its war against Ukraine. But Iran has long been the backbone of support for Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and still carries enormous influence in the region.

At the same time, Israel’s overwhelming response to the Hamas attack has damaged its reputation around the world. The idea that Israel is deliberately killing Gaza civilians, even committing “genocide,” has stuck in many countries.

Israeli scholars have been blacklisted; college campuses have featured boisterous support for Gaza and hostility toward Israel; Arab governments, facing pressure from their publics, have had to distance themselves from Israel once again, reaffirming support for the Palestinian cause.

In the end, the future of the Palestinian people is not merely a question of who governs its borders or rebuilds its homes. It is a question of the deeper, unresolved conflicts of history, identity, and belonging that have animated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for over a century.

And Israelis, too, are weary of the ongoing destruction.

Debbie Hill/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Noorit Felsenthal Berger poses for a photo in her home in Jerusalem, Sept. 15, 2024.

PART FOUR
On the ground in Jerusalem

The only way Noorit Felsenthal Berger says she can sleept these days is to eat a piece of chocolate and chase it with a sleeping pill.

She’s sitting cross-legged on a couch strewn with maroon- and gold-striped pillows in her residence in Jerusalem, feeling a strange sense of guilt about the life she built for her three sons.

Her youngest is a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, and he’s been serving in Gaza since the war began. Her middle son, a reservist, has also been deployed to the war zone. Her oldest, studying in the U.S., reports his encounters with antisemitism on his campus.

“I feel guilty that my sons have to go through this,” Ms. Felsenthal says. She feels guilty, too, “that as a mother I didn’t protect them, that I made the decision of bringing them up here, the fact that we educated them the way we did – to take responsibility, to be part of society.”

Compulsory military service is part of this sense of responsibility. It keeps young conscripts like her sons, now beholden to the friends they fight alongside, from not refusing such service.

Along with guilt, there’s a fear that hangs over her like a sword on a thread – “the constant terror of a knock on the door.”

Debbie Hill/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Noorit Felsenthal Berger plays with her dog, Gioia, in her home in Jerusalem, Sept. 15, 2024. Ms. Felsenthal is a member of the organization “Parents of Combat Soldiers Shouting Out, ‘Enough!’”

She can lose her breath easily, as when she saw an ambulance and two army officers come to her usually quiet, narrow side street in Jerusalem. Seeing a pair of officers standing outside a home in Israel, especially during times of war, she says, is akin to seeing the angel of death.

“I fled as quickly as possible, hardly breathing, hoping they were not there for me,” Ms. Felsenthal recalls. “Later, I found out they had come to inform a family at the end of the street that they had lost their son.”

She’s a child psychologist, so she has some understanding of how people try to cope with the emotions of such situations, the maddening alternation between agony, then relief; agony, then relief.

After her youngest came home for a rare visit this spring, she drove him back to his base. She felt like Abraham on Mount Moriah, she says, doing her silent duty as did the patriarch when God asked him to sacrifice his son.

After Oct. 7, she fully supported the war in Gaza. It was justified, she believed, an act of Israeli self-defense in response to the massacres perpetrated by Hamas that day, and the hostages they abducted and took into Palestinian territory.

Today, however, that support has turned to opposition. Ms. Felsenthal has since joined an organization of fellow parents of soldiers. They’ve named themselves, “Parents of Combat Soldiers Shouting Out, ‘Enough!’”

There is no negotiated, political solution on the horizon, they believe. Israeli soldiers keep dying. Palestinian civilians are suffering and losing loved ones every day. So their advocacy is simple: a political deal to end the suffering on both sides and bring the hostages home.

Amir Cohen/Reuters

Israeli soldiers take cover near a military vehicle during the ongoing ground operation against Hamas in Gaza, Sept. 13, 2024.

Like many in Israel, the group believes the ongoing devastation has less to do with Israeli security considerations and more with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right government using it to remain in power.

Her therapeutic work with children, too, including those who’ve lost parents in the war, has only drawn her deeper into the trauma of her country.

“There is more awareness today of the trauma soldiers are going through,” Ms. Felsenthal says. “I think there is a specific trauma of mothers and probably fathers also that we are less conscious of.”

As she speaks, her black Labrador puppy chases a ball. The family named her Gioia, Italian for “joy,” because of the happiness she’s brought during this fraught moment.

“This year has been a complete nightmare,” Ms. Felsenthal says. “The constant lonely feeling of not being understood, [it’s] like living in a different planet of rage, despair, and fear, and trying to carry on.”

Special correspondent Taylor Luck contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.

Hope.

That modest goal – the search for a simple ray of light – is at the heart of the Monitor’s powerful cover story marking Oct. 7 and the start of the now yearlong war between Israel and Hamas.

Hope is sustaining people on both sides of the war that began with Hamas’ murder and abduction of hundreds of men, women, and children in southern Israel.

The story explores other parallels as well: a similar sense of personal loss. A feeling of being left undefended, powerless, with the outside world unable or unready to understand or help.

“There is no post-trauma. The trauma is ongoing,” Yara Asi, an academic specializing in the effect of the conflict on Palestinians, is quoted as saying.

And one need only read in the story the remarks of Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of one of the hostages taken into Gaza on Oct. 7, to understand that he, too, is struggling.

So how to move beyond the trauma? How to rekindle hope for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike?

The architecture of any realistic peace arrangement has long been clear.

That’s not because it’s likely to come easily, nor because it’s perfect, but because it’s the only way of addressing both Israelis’ and Palestinians’ core concerns.

It’s the two-state solution, and it’s built on what the late Israeli novelist Amos Oz described as an essential truth about the conflict: that it’s a “clash between right and right.”

Prospects for compromise now seem more distant than ever.

The war that erupted Oct. 7 is being driven by leaders on both sides who reject that very idea. Hamas wants Israel gone altogether. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presides over an unprecedentedly right-wing coalition explicitly opposed to Palestinian statehood.

Ordinary Israelis remain shaken by the worst single attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, and the inability of their vaunted army and security services to stop it. Palestinians are reeling from months of Israeli attacks that have left much of Gaza in ruins, hundreds of thousands displaced, and tens of thousands wounded or dead.

Little wonder, then, that in their first joint survey since Oct. 7, leading Israeli pollster Dahlia Scheindlin and Palestinian colleague Khalil Shikaki have found a mirror-image picture of pain.

By far, most Israelis and Palestinians feel their own “persecution and injustice” is incomparable to that of other peoples. For Palestinians, this justifies Oct. 7; for Israelis, the war in Gaza.

And a two-state peace? A mere 31% of Israelis say they still support the idea, and 40% of Palestinians.

Still, the pollsters also make another point – a point of potential hope – that I find resonant from my own nearly 50 years of living, reporting, and writing on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

It’s that when leaders do show the vision and courage required to explore compromise and peace, opinions on the ground can change dramatically as well.

As Dr. Shikaki put it in a book about his years of joint Palestinian-Israeli polling, “When negotiations became serious, support for violence went down in response.”

Degraded but not defeated, underground but enduring, Hamas’ low-profile survival in Gaza is challenging both the organization’s and Israel’s narratives of “victory” one year into a devastating war triggered by its deadly attack a year ago.

As Israel ramps up its war with Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon – deepening its ground offensive into southern Lebanon and striking Beirut over the weekend – Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, still appears to be operating a potent, if battered, militant movement.

Largely unseen by the population of Gaza above ground, Hamas has lost its security grip over much of the strip but still retains fighters and popularity one year on – though recent polls suggest it is vastly more popular in the West Bank than in Gaza.

Amid a steep cost in civilian lives in Gaza, neither the Israeli military’s ability to dislodge Hamas nor the movement’s postwar future is certain.

Hamas’ attack in Israel last year killed 1,200 people, seized 250 hostages, and triggered a ruthless Israeli military offensive that has pulverized the strip. As of this week it has killed 41,000 people, the majority civilians, including 17,000 children.

Hamas’ attack also prompted Hezbollah to fire a barrage of rockets into Israel one day later, an assault it has kept up since and that the Lebanese militant movement said would end only with a cease-fire in Gaza.

These Hezbollah rockets drove over 60,000 Israelis from their homes in northern towns and villages and sowed the seeds for the current conflict in Lebanon and attacks between Israel and Hezbollah patron Iran, which threaten to overshadow the Israel-Hamas war itself.

Military losses

Internally, Hamas is reorganizing after the loss of several of its leaders.

The most high-profile are political leader and lead negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, whom Israel assassinated in Tehran, Iran, in July, and Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ top military commander, whom Israel claims to have killed in a July airstrike, though Hamas disputes that.

Mr. Haniyeh’s death led to Mr. Sinwar’s quick succession as head of the movement’s political arm, further consolidating the hard-liner’s power, though rumors about his condition have proliferated in recent weeks as his hand-delivered messages to other Hamas leaders have lessened. Some say he has not been heard from in weeks.

Israel also claims to have killed Rawhi Mushtaha, the de facto Hamas prime minister and Mr. Sinwar’s right-hand man.

Adel Hana/AP/File

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar greets his supporters at a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, April 13, 2022.

“No one can deny that we have paid a very high price when it comes to the movement in general and the political leadership in particular,” says Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas politburo in Qatar and former Gaza minister of health.

Yet he and other Hamas sources describe the leadership losses as only temporary setbacks.

“Since the foundation of the movement in 1987, we are used every now and then to lose our leadership, from Sheikh [Ahmed] Yassin onwards,” Mr. Naim says, referring to Hamas’ founder and spiritual leader, who was killed by Israel in 2004. “On each of these occasions, the movement became stronger. Compare Hamas in 1987 to Hamas 2023-24, and you will see a clear rising curve at the political, popular, and military levels.”

Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 of Hamas’ estimated 25,000 to 35,000 fighters. Hamas officials dispute these numbers but acknowledge that “thousands” of fighters have been killed.

Independent verification of Hamas’ capabilities is currently not possible. Israel prevents international journalists from entering Gaza, and Palestinian journalists face extreme dangers, with more than 130 killed by the Israeli military since the start of the war.

But international analysts tracking Hamas’ military engagements and frequency of attacks say they believe up to 20 of Hamas’ 24 battalions have been defeated or severely degraded. Companies and brigades cut off by Israeli-controlled land corridors are unable to communicate with one another.

Two to four functioning battalions remain in central Gaza, which has not witnessed the same intense Israeli ground operations as have the north and south, according to the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.

“Looking at Hamas’ military capabilities, the constraints [it is] operating under will make it hard to rebuild itself into the same organization it was on Oct. 7,” says Brian Carter, an American Enterprise Institute researcher.

AP/File

Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (right), is greeted by well-wishers upon his arrival at the Rafah crossing point, June 24, 1998, following a four-month-long fundraising trip to Muslim countries.

But without alternative leadership in Gaza, he says, Israel, which will be hard-pressed to maintain its presence, faces a “risk that Hamas can reconstitute itself” in the long term.

Sources close to Hamas say it may be preserving a small number of select battalions, keeping them from engaging in combat, to exert postwar influence over the Gaza Strip and position itself as a kingmaker in Palestinian politics.

“Hamas is looking to the day after the end of the war. It knows that by surviving and keeping some armed forces it can project victory,” says a Palestinian source, who declined to be named for fear of retribution by Israel, “and dominate both Gaza and Palestinian politics.”

Absent above ground

On the surface in Gaza, however, Hamas is practically nowhere to be found.

Residents report a civil police force and security services that rarely show up when they are needed.

That has led many Gazans to conclude that Hamas has been all but ousted from much of Gaza, creating a vacuum filled by gangs and clans.

The Gaza government, a mix of Hamas die-hards, independents, and civil servants appointed both by Hamas and by the Palestinian Authority before Hamas’ 2007 takeover of Gaza, has been decimated by Israeli missile strikes and assassinations hitting everyone from high-ranking Hamas officials to non-Hamas police cadets and nurses.

“Before the war, the Gaza government and Hamas had significant security influence across all areas. However, during the war, this influence has diminished across the board,” says a Gaza engineer who did not wish to be named.

He and other residents say that while Hamas’ security apparatus exerts influence in northern Gaza and the ruins of Gaza City, its control is “partial or nonexistent” in central and southern Gaza.

Only when there is an ease in Israeli airstrikes do Hamas security services reemerge in brief instances in limited areas. Gaza police are only willing to risk their lives to appear in cases of murder, residents say.

None of the dozens of Gaza residents interviewed say they have seen Hamas battalions or fighters since the start of the war.

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

A Palestinian boy stands on the rubble of a house destroyed in Israel's military offensive, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2024.

Nisreen Alkhatib, a translator and journalist, says her brother-in-law, not a member of Hamas but someone she describes as a “dedicated policeman” who worked to secure aid trucks entering Gaza, was killed in an Israeli strike this summer.

Due to a high death rate, few recruits have been willing to sign up for the police or security services, sources say.

Chaos and crime

Testing Hamas’ limited capabilities is the reemergence of armed gangs and clans, who held sway in Gaza before 2007. Soaring theft and violent competition for scarce food and resources amid the Israeli blockade have overwhelmed the few police officers who try to do something about it.

An aid worker based in Deir al-Balah says the “war has created an environment ripe for chaos, crime, and instability,” which a largely underground Hamas is unable to contain.

When Ashraf Abu Hussein discovered his home in Deir al-Balah had been ransacked by looters during his family’s displacement by Israeli forces, the father of five went to a police station and was surprised to find it open.

He was asked by officers to list the stolen items – a fuel cylinder, shoes, kitchenware, TV, fan, clothes, chairs – but there was no follow-up.

“I doubt the thieves will ever be caught. There are organized gangs moving through houses and stealing everything,” Mr. Abu Hussein says. “Every day, we witness numerous disputes and quarrels between families and neighbors. Yet the police are rarely seen.”

But Gaza residents agree that no matter the battlefield losses, Hamas as a political movement will endure long after the war.

“Since [the Hamas government] is part of the people and the people are part of it, it won’t die,” says Ms. Alkhatib, the translator.

“Hamas is not only in Gaza. Hamas is in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, and in the diaspora. It is not only a military group,” says Mr. Naim, the Hamas politburo member, highlighting its ongoing “social, academic, political, and religious” activities.

Multiple Arab diplomatic sources say that should the war end today, Hamas retains sufficient military power to mount an insurgency or undermine any new governing entity in Gaza.

Hamas officials cast its survival as victory.

“We don’t see Hamas as defeated in this round of the conflict,” says Mr. Naim.

“Israel declared three goals: to crush Hamas, to push Palestinians into Egypt, and retrieve the Israeli hostages. To us, it has failed to achieve any of its goals.”

Karen Leslie Hernandez/Courtesy of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County

Community members engage in partnered discussions on religion and culture at a workshop hosted by the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County in Pleasant Hill, California, Sept. 15, 2024.

They call themselves sisters.

For the past five years, a group of 10 women – three Jewish, three Muslim, three Christian, and one Baháʼí – has been meeting monthly to listen to one another.

Mary Anne Winig says they always begin with an invitation to share. In the cozy and confidential comfort of one another’s homes, they bring a dish and a curiosity to learn more about one another’s faiths.

“We respect and listen and cherish each other’s friendship,” says Ms. Winig, a member of Temple Isaiah who co-leads an interfaith women’s circle in Contra Costa County in California. “I’ve learned so much from my Muslim sisters from just how much we share.”

The topic might change, but the group’s focus has always been the same: to build understanding by listening to one another’s differences and finding common ground.

“The key is we just talk about it,” says Nazli Sajjad, a member of the Islamic Center of Zahra. “We have differences. We get mad also. But when they talk, we listen. And when we talk, they listen.”

That’s true even of the war in Gaza. The Oct. 7 attack and subsequent war has killed tens of thousands of people and devastated land holy to multiple faiths. The shock waves sent fissures through interfaith groups across the United States. Many have disbanded. But some, like here in Contra Costa County, have redoubled their efforts to find common ground, even amid the destruction and death that all members interviewed say has caused them deep pain.

While interfaith coalitions might seem quaint in a time when fewer Americans attend church, experts in conflict resolution say the work of these interreligious groups is vital to reweaving the tattered fabric of society. At a time when many people default to demonizing those who believe differently than they do, talking to one another and acknowledging one another’s humanity can take courage.

Troy Sambajon/The Christian Science Monitor

Karen Leslie Hernandez, interim executive director of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County (I4C), poses with a sign in the window of the Interfaith Council that reads, “Pleasant Hill Stands United Against Hate,” in California, Sept. 15, 2024. “The role of I4C is to offer a safe space for people to come together to express their fears, their frustrations, their anger, their insecurities,” she says.

“Interfaith coalitions are the pillars and cornerstones of communities, where people can talk across difference, and should be the refuge, haven, or place where some of the most important conversations can be had,” says John Sarrouf, who has spent more than two decades mediating conflicts.

Mr. Sarrouf says interfaith groups are more than a canary in a coal mine. They also sit at an important crossroads: people’s deep values as lived in the places where they’ve chosen to build their families.

“Conflict tends to flatten people and make them singular in their identity as pro or con ... [on] an issue, when our lives are really multifaceted,” says Mr. Sarrouf, co-executive director of Essential Partners in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“One of the most important things you can do is find those points of connection and live in to your common experiences,” he adds. “Dialogue is our most important tool to stay open to one another.”

In California, members of the women’s group say they recognize a strong message in all their faiths: to love thy neighbor as thyself.

“It’s really up to us to find the places of agreement ... to try to understand each other’s differences in the best way we can,” says Carole, another member of the women’s circle who asked that her last name not be used.

The war in Gaza erupted one year ago, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israeli citizens, including children, and took 250 hostages. Israel responded with a barrage that devastated the area, home to 2 million people. The Gaza Health Ministry estimates more than 41,000 people have been killed, many of them children.

They all firmly believe that “no children should die. No parents should be sending their kids off to war. No parent should be begging to have their children released from terrible hostage conditions. On that we are 100% agreed,” says Ms. Winig.

When disagreements do arise, members’ first instinct is to listen, and listen deeply. The 10 women talk a lot about their backgrounds and differences, but members interviewed all say their circle is grounded in the belief that a lot more connects us than divides us.

“If we can do it with sisterhood, we would like to spread that hope to other communities,” says Ms. Winig.

Talking together as “an act of faithfulness”

In Contra Costa County, David Longhurst arranges sofas into a circle and fills in the gaps with folding chairs. The formation ensures all voices are heard equally.

“We, as humans, sometimes get misconceptions about other people when we don’t really understand them. But the best way to learn about someone is to ask them yourself,” says Mr. Longhurst, chair of the governing board of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, known as I4C. He traces four generations of his family through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Troy Sambajon/The Christian Science Monitor

David Longhurst, head of the governing council of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, stands outside its office in Pleasant Hill, California, Sept. 15, 2024.

The group acts as a peace-building organization and link among the more than 100 faith communities residing there. Over its 40-year existence, it has collaborated extensively on local solutions to community issues including building housing and addressing child welfare.

“Ideally, I4C is an opportunity for people just to get outside of that tension and just see each other as brothers and sisters and work side by side,” says Mr. Longhurst, from the recreation room of the Hillcrest Congregational Church, where the council meets monthly.

After the Hamas attack Oct. 7, working side by side got harder. For many months, the shared pain was too much to put into words, Mr. Longhurst says. The ongoing war has devastated members of the Jewish and Muslim communities. Those interviewed say they cannot agree except for one thing: There’s no healing while the violence persists.

There is no way to avoid disagreement in honest conversation, says Rabbi Or Rose, director of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.

However, “If people are genuinely willing to engage in dignified dialogue – sharing their hopes and fears, joys, and pain – there is a humanizing effect that has the potential to open our hearts to those present and to others beyond the immediate circle of conversation,” he says.

“When these bridges are damaged, leaders need to be steadfast in the work of repair, which in Jewish parlance is the work of tikkun – ‘healing’ or ‘mending,’” says Rabbi Rose.

The bridge builders are not powerless, the rabbi continues.

Nor is talking just talking, says Dr. Lucinda Mosher, professor of interreligious studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. “I firmly believe that pretty much every religion has the potential to see dialogue, collaboration, across religious difference as an act of faithfulness.”

Here in Contra Costa County, the Interfaith Council has continually met individually with Jewish and Muslim leaders to better understand their needs.

Individual members still volunteer in the community, packing hygiene kits for homeless people and donating goods and supplies for recently arrived refugees from Afghanistan. And when antisemitic leaflets saying “Hitler was right” were spread around the county in August, the council swiftly denounced them.

“It’s true we’ve had our challenges of working together,” says Mr. Longhurst. “But the hope is that we can be able to reconnect and start again. Not start over.”

In September, at the first workshop in a monthly series, nearly two dozen members attended, representing faith communities of Presbyterian, Latter-day Saints, Baháʼí, Christian Science, and others. One Jewish member was present. Missing was a Muslim voice. The absence was felt by more than one member.

In small groups, the question was posed, “In this great polarization, as interfaith practitioners, what are we called to be?” One person replied, “Maybe we’re called to be bridge builders.”

Karen Leslie Hernandez/Courtesy of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County

Residents of Contra Costa County participate in a listening exercise to deepen their understanding of one another at an interfaith picnic organized by the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, Aug. 25, 2024.

“It’s not for the easy times; it’s for the hard times”

Fellow I4C council member David Matz embraces paradox, the belief that two things can be simultaneously true.

“From a Jewish perspective, there is a very long history of many people wanting to harm and kill us. That is true. But it’s also true that we’re in a situation where we’re doing a lot of harm to other people,” says Dr. Matz, a psychologist. “If you’re only hearing one side, it’s not the full story.”

Although a dedicated member of Temple Isaiah, Dr. Matz says he’s often called antisemitic due to his concern for the Palestinians living in Gaza.

“I consider myself pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian at a time where that’s not really allowed by many communities,” he says. While dialoguing cannot guarantee peace, he says, not dialoguing guarantees nothing will happen.

“When the going gets tough, that’s what these sorts of things are made for. That’s what I4C is for. That’s why we need to have best practices of doing bridge building and dialogue. It’s not for the easy times; it’s for the hard times,” says Dr. Matz.

Dr. Matz’s mother escaped Nazi Germany in 1940, losing many family members at Auschwitz. Raised in America with a bias against Germans, he says his perspective shifted in 2003. He was invited back to Germany by the children of Nazis to share his family’s story. While they were talking, his counterparts broke down in tears.

Dr. Matz found that hatred began to dissolve. The cathartic experience led him to reclaim his identity as a German Jew and his German citizenship.

“You can’t help but feel empathy for that person in their suffering, despite the fact that they’re my historic enemy. That humanity starts to melt the barriers between us,” he says.

A friendship built on trust, and samosas

Ms. Sajjad and Carole’s friendship began with a question. Five years ago, at a picnic hosted by the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, Carole asked, “Do you know how to make samosas?”

“Of course I know how to make samosas,” replied Ms. Sajjad. “But I didn’t teach her; I just made them for her,” she chuckles, recalling it later over the phone. “So the next time, she came over to my house and we made samosas together. Since then, I have known her as my friend.”

During the month of Ramadan, when Muslims observe a strict fast from dawn until sunset, the 10 sisters broke their fast together with a meal at the mosque. At Passover, the interfaith group of women had their own table at the synagogue.

“Peace in Arabic is salaam. In Hebrew, it’s shalom. In English, it’s peace,” says Ms. Winig. “When we email, we end with ‘Salaam. Shalom. Peace.’ Peace is an ever-present topic.”

Staff writer Sophie Ungerleider contributed to this report.

My phone has been pinging all morning as we prepare for tonight’s feast.

What time do we start?

Does anyone have an extra prayer book?

Everyone brings their favorite dessert.

Every year, I get together with a group of Jews, Muslims, and Catholics for the Jewish holidays. Our connection to Israel and Palestine brings us together. We’ve all lived in one or the other at some point, and now we live in Salta, Argentina, where we gather each year to celebrate.

This year, I’m bringing a brisket. Grandma Ruth’s recipe simmers in the oven. She passed away years ago, but the rich scent of her Boca Raton holiday kitchen now fills our house in South America.

“The secret ingredient is ketchup,” she always said. It’s not a flavor Argentines are accustomed to, but we all bring foods that aren’t from here. Honey cake. Hummus. Falafel. The tastes remind us of home.

In spite of what’s happening in Israel and Gaza, we rarely talk about war or politics at the table. Instead, food and family fill our conversations. The best hummus is from Nablus, in the West Bank. Our parents are getting older. Our children are leaving home – some to Israel, others to university in Argentina.

Though we may not say it aloud, the faces celebrating with us reflect our shared belief that Israelis, Palestinians, Argentines, and Americans have a right to live free from pain and harm.

When I look around, I see Rinat and Yuval, who moved from Israel to Salta after falling in love and marrying their Argentine partners. They’re very Israeli, expressing strong opinions in definitive voices.

Not once in 15 years have I heard Gustavo or Eleanora, the Salteño other halves of Rinat and Yuval, speak about Israel or Palestine. Instead, their actions speak for them as they support their spouses and adopt the Jewish holidays as their own.

Fayez is the only Muslim at the table this year. He moved from the West Bank to be with his Salteña wife, Mayki. Fayez speaks loudly and laughs easily and often, but underneath his joviality lies concern for his family. Are they all right?

My daughter Lila was 8 years old the first time we joined these families. She was shy and refused to talk to Fayez and Mayki’s son, Nasim. Our kids sat beside each other during dinner, mostly ignoring one another for years.

It wasn’t until they were ready to graduate from high school that they connected. Instead of sitting quietly staring sideways at each other with suspicion, they finally talked.

“We were scared of each other,” Lila told me. “I thought he didn’t like me, and he thought I didn’t like him.”

“Why did you think that?”

She shrugged as if the reason for their distrust was irrelevant.

“I was an anxious kid,” Lila said. “He might have seen my anxiety as hostility, but it turns out we have a lot in common.”

“Like what?” I asked. They like the same music. They’ve both traveled outside of Argentina. They love spicy food.

“We both have parents who aren’t from here,” she said. “We understand each other.”

If I only listened to the news about Israel and Palestine, I’d believe that this tiny piece of land, around 11,000 square miles, exports war, hatred, and death. When I watch people throw cruel barbs and accusations online, I wonder how we can expect to find a solution to a centurieslong battle between two communities when individuals can’t find a way to talk.

If we truly want a lasting peace, we must seek common ground. The grief and loss both sides have experienced make it harder to see. Each of us wants to protect ourselves and our families. No one wants to let down their guard. The fear of losing even more after so much has already been lost looms large for us.

Religion and place of birth alone are not reasons to hate each other, particularly when you break matza together year after year. Hate can’t survive across a dinner table you build together.

Is that naive? Maybe. I say it’s those small moments of humanity that bind us. We all eat bread. We all love our children. We all want a place to call home that is free from bloodshed and bombs.

Peace doesn’t begin in a boardroom, on social media, or on a politician’s agenda. It begins at a shared table eating hummus with your children beside you.

AP

Interfaith leaders hold a candle-lighting ceremony at The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles marking the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel.

A day before the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the commander in chief of the Israel Defense Forces sent a letter to his troops. In it, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi asked soldiers to not only remember the day but also engage in “deep introspection” about “our failures.”

Two weeks earlier, the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, made a gesture of self-concession. “We are willing to put all of our weapons aside, so long as Israel is willing to do the same,” he told reporters. His apparent compromise toward peace may have been a reaction to a common slogan among Iranians during recent anti-government protests: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life is for Iran.”

In Lebanon, the violence caused by the Shiite group Hezbollah and Israel has led many people to realize that their internal divisions among the country’s many religious groups is a cause of the war. “We haven’t learned to live with each other,” Bassam Sawma, a Christian merchant, told The New York Times.

Outside the Middle East, where the yearlong war in Gaza has triggered divisive campus protests, universities have had to relearn their purpose as safe domains for self-reflection. In September, for example, the University of Pennsylvania created an Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion, the first of its kind nationally.

At the United Nations, several diplomats in September pleaded for personal contrition as a way to end the latest war in the Middle East. “Critical self-reflection of what we or generations before us in our countries have done wrong is actually to our benefit,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 26.

A vision of international order based on equality, she said, “demands, especially in times of crisis, the strength to recognise the pain of others, even if our own pain seems unbearable.” In doing so, “We might sometimes hear ... about our own shortcomings.”

“This is how one of the [Israeli] hostage’s families put it. Humanity is universal,” she said. “If in the darkest hour of her life, the mother of a murdered hostage finds the strength to see both sides, then we, the leaders of the countries around the world ... should be capable of doing the same.”

Such moments of self-reflection were particularly evident among Jews. This Oct. 7 was the midpoint of the 10 days spanning Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The High Holidays are a period of self-reflection and atonement. In a new book, “For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today,” Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue in the New York borough of Manhattan sees the Oct. 7 massacre and the response to it as an “inflection point” for Jews.

“For the first time in our lives,” he wrote, “we have begun to ask ourselves: what kind of Jews do we want to be? Where do we turn for guidance in such a time as this?” For many Muslims, a similar spiritual introspection occurred during this year’s monthlong Muslim observance of Ramadan – in March and April, or the half-year mark of the war in Gaza.

Perhaps the greatest example of a moment of reflection during this anniversary comes from a former hostage, Liat Atzili. She was captured by Hamas at her kibbutz Oct. 7 and spent 54 days in Gaza. Her husband was killed. Without a spirit of rebirth (tekumah in Hebrew), “We will only sink further into the cycle of mutual anger and victimhood that has plagued our relationship with the Palestinians for too long,” she wrote in The New York Times.

And, as she told The Associated Press for the anniversary, “Nobody’s going anywhere. We don’t have to love each other, but we have to get along, and we have to find a way that everybody can live here in safety.”