Two years on, true faces of the Israeli-Palestinian war have emerged

When Hamas infiltrators struck Israel at the crack of dawn on Saturday, Oct 7, 2023, nobody - not the Israelis or Palestinians, nor anyone elsewhere in the world - believed this would trigger Israel’s longest war since the creation of a Jewish state.

- Jonathan Eyal Global Affairs Correspondent

The overriding tactic of all previous Israeli governments has always been to rely on their superior and highly mobile military to administer a quick blow to their enemies and then try to return to normality.

Even what Israel calls its War of Independence and the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” lasted only nine months — the 1947-1948 fighting was the most sustained confrontation Israel experienced. Most other wars involving Israel were over in weeks and even days. Yet Oct 7, 2025, marks two years since the outbreak of the Gaza war a grim record nobody predicted.

Nor did many predict another development that is, perhaps, even more significant: the way the war over the past two years has changed Israel itself.

It is now a country even more determined to fight, and even more convinced than ever that it can only live by the sword. It is also a country that resents its poor international image but has no intention of offering many concessions to improve its reputation, an increasingly fatalistic nation, which is at once both highly educated and immensely innovative, yet at the same time obsessed with its vulnerability.

THE SHOCK

The immense suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza has by now obscured the sheer magnitude of the shock most Israelis felt at the Hamas attack. Israelis are, of course, no strangers to violence.

But in every previous war, bombing or missile exchange, Israelis expected their military to remain in control and protect them.

Indeed, since the Iron Dome missile defence shield was deployed, many Israelis have grown used to watching missile attacks as though they were mere computer games, applauding loudly whenever an Israeli interceptor destroyed an incoming missile.