While the Gaza War is entering the third year, Israel-Hamas peace discussions offer hope: NPR

Like Aviv – Israel commemorated a dark birthday: two full years since the attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people and led 251 people hostage.

The war that Israel was unleashed in Gaza almost immediately after plunging the Palestinians who live there in narcotic levels of destruction and death.

More than 67,000 people died during the war, nearly a third of them, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The rescuers say that more bodies are buried under rubble, and that the number of deaths is higher than those reported because they cannot recover people while the Israeli bombardment continues.

“When the war ends and the precise research and counting begins, the whole world will be shocked by the extent of the tragedy that hit Gaza,” said Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense of Gaza.

The Gaza Strip itself has been almost leveled, the United Nations believing that 78% of the structures having been damaged or destroyed, leaving a monumental reconstruction task for anyone who will govern the enclave afterwards.

Its residents are suffering from famine, as controls of Israeli military borders continue to limit food and the aid that enters.

But two years later, the birthday is also enlightened by hope, because the leaders of Israel and Hamas are pushed by the Arab countries and the United States to a potential end of the war.

Less than a complete victory

This is not that the leaders of Hamas or Israel wanted to finish.

A militant Islamist group of the Gaza Strip, Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the EU and many other Western countries. Hamas leadership has been murdered, its seriously slowed down combat capacity in Gaza. The group has lost a lot of support from Arab countries. The American ceasefire plan under negotiation this week could allow the soldiers of Israel to stay inside the Gaza Strip, and Israel asked that Hamas be entirely demilitarized.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched war in Gaza – despite initial intelligence failures leading to the attack on October 7 – as part of a series of security victories against Israel regional enemies, in particular nuclear Iran and the Lebanese computer proxy group, Hezbollah.

“Together, we have rejected the plans for the annihilation of our enemies. From Gaza to Rafah, from Beirut to Damascus, from Yemen to Tehran, we made great gains together,” Netanyahu said in a televised speech last week.

While the continuation of the war has slowed down a case of corruption against Netanyahu, the war has also taxed the economy, stretched its exhausted combat forces, strongly divided Israeli society and left its world status severely tarnished by the accusations of genocide, which the Israeli government deny.

“Our government does not care and does not really do its job and has managed to put sticks in the wheels of each attempt to obtain an agreement,” said Gabriela Goldschmidt, who attended weekly demonstrations in Tel Aviv against the government of Netanyahu in the past two years.

And two years later, Israeli society was haunted by a counterfactual: could it have saved the life of more hostages?

“If Netanyahu had accepted Lapid’s proposal more than a year ago, perhaps more than 40 hostages, which were murdered or killed in captivity, would be alive today,” Vladimir Beliak, a member of the Israeli Parliament, Yair Lapid and the Arab countries this week.

Gaza in ruins

In Gaza, where the deadly Israeli bombings continued last weekend despite Hamas acceptance of the first phase of the American peace plan, the Palestinians mark the end of a second year of constant death and hunger.

“We pray that all this destruction leads to something good. I swear to God,” said Mohammad Nasher Nassar, 31, who stayed in Gaza City despite Israeli orders to the city’s population last week to leave immediately or be considered as an activist or a sympathizer of Hamas.

He and the nearly 2 million people in Gaza hold a long -term respite against forced trips, frequent air strikes that have sometimes destroyed whole families and armed elite shooters who have targeted civilians.

“Daily life – it was a question of university, gymnasium, sports. Suddenly, it has become a place to sit, water, travel, your son, your nephew … In search of where your father went, where your brother, where he went,” said Ahmed Abu Saif, 22.

Even after a potential cease-fire, the reconstruction task will be intimidating and could take decades.

“I am waiting for the displaced to come back as soon as possible – today before tomorrow so that life can come back – celebrations, children ululating and laughing in the streets – so that the old return comes back, God wants, as before the war,” explains Nassar.

Their hopes are tempered by the knowledge that the important day light remains between the way in which Israel and Hamas envisage their future presence in Gaza, and that a cease-fire previous this year ended after only three months.

“It is as if we had been in a bottle so closely … and now we can breathe,” said Iman Abu Aklayn, 48, mother of four in Gaza City. But just a breath, she says, “as we always live a nightmare.”

Souvenirs are deep

In Kibbutz Nir Oz in the Western Negev desert, residents also say that they have not changed.

The tiny agricultural community was one of the hardest affected during the attack led by Hamas two years ago. About a quarter of the united community was killed or removed. Nine of their members remain captive in Gaza and many surviving members were too traumatized to return home.

Tzvika Tesler, the president of Kibbutz, says that his community is now debating the opportunity to demolish the charred carts and with house balls that have been attacked or to preserve them as monuments.

“Kibbutz has not yet made a decision,” he said. Probably, they would continue the two options: “There will be a very organized process; Kibbutz will become both a living community and a community of souvenirs.”

In the Kibbutz cemetery, the rows of new brilliant tombstones have the same date of death: October 7, 2023. Standing among the tombs during a commemoration event this week, Sagui Dekel-Chen described the fight to understand life when many of his neighbors were killed. Hamas kidnapped him with Kibbutz Nir Oz and held it captive in Gaza for a year and four months before publishing it in February 2025.

“Why does sorrow not only come on special occasions? Why is it not here, in the cemetery? Why is it with me all the time, everywhere?” Asked Dekel-Chen, his voice muffled by tears. “I am especially that, but not all that.”

While he and others spoke, there was the occasional Israeli artillery boom from Gaza, less than 2 kilometers: a recall that war continues, just like pain, for Israelis and for Palestinians.

Itay Stern contributed the reports of Nir Oz, Israel and Anas Baba contributed the reports of Gaza City, Gaza Strip.