Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu arrives on stage. (Image: Getty)
A defiant has released a fresh statement on the war one year on from Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack.
He said: ” We will end the war when we complete all the goals we set: overthrowing the evil rule of Hamas, returning all our abductees home – both the dead and the living, thwarting any future threat from Gaza to , and returning our residents in the south and north safely to their homes.”
Hamas marked the anniversary of its October 7, 2023, attack by firing a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, underscoring its resilience after a year of war and devastation in Gaza. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which began firing rockets at on October 8 in support of its ally Hamas, vowed to keep up the barrages despite its recent losses.
Meanwhile, Israelis flocked to ceremonies, cemeteries and memorial sites around the country, remembering the hundreds of victims, the dozens of hostages still in captivity and soldiers killed in battle. Commemorations were also planned across Europe and elsewhere.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the October 7 attack and abducted another 250.
Before dawn, hundreds of families of those killed at the Nova music festival, joined by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, gathered at the site where at least 364 revellers were killed and many others were taken, hostage. As the sun rose, organizers played the same trance track that was abruptly halted when the barrage of rockets began.
At 6:29am – the exact minute Hamas launched its attack – the crowd observed a moment of silence. A woman’s piercing wail broke the quiet and booms echoed from the fighting in Gaza, just a few kilometres (miles) away.
“When we are here, we are near our loved ones,” said Sigal Bar-On, whose niece, Yuval Bar-On, 25, and her fiancé Moshe Shuva, 34, were killed in the attack two months before they were to be married.
“We can’t understand how a year has passed,” said Shimon Busika, whose 25-year-old son Yarden was killed at the festival.
At 6:31am, four projectiles were launched from Gaza toward the same communities that came under attack last year, without disrupting the ceremony.