Inside a nation in crisis

Jonathan Freedland talks to survivors, displaced people and senior political and military figures about life in Israel before and after 7 October, and considers what might happen next 

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LAST WEEKEND THE WAR PAUSED, but it is not over. 

There was relief at the days of quiet between Israel and Hamas, and joy for the families reunited with loved ones, thanks to the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for prisoners held in Israel, which began last Friday.

But however long the ceasefire may be extended in return for the release of more Hamas-held captives, this war will not be over any time soon. If anything, it is likely to intensify.

It is too big to stop now, it runs too deep. And it has already turned Israel upside down.

You only have to spend a few days in the country to see that. The war is everywhere. In the airport, signs direct you to the nearest bomb shelter in case the siren should sound. Open Google Maps and, unprompted, it shows you where to go to take cover.

By the roadside, huge billboards carry patriotic slogans – “We Will Triumph”, “We Are All One Israel” – against the rippling blue and white of the national flag.

Use a taxi-hailing app, and it promises you: “Together we’ll get through this!” And everywhere, on every lamppost and wall, even on the display screens of the passport machines, are those same images of the hostages’ faces and the everpresent demand, sometimes shouted through megaphones at traffic intersections, sometimes on T-shirts: “Bring Them Home Now.”

On that, and on the war itself, there is a striking unity. Among Jewish Israelis, the internal dissent that greeted the first Lebanon war in 1982 and the second in 2006 is absent.

There is next to no opposition, even from those who stood against previous military operations in Gaza. This, they say, is diff erent.