Devastation and a war that continues to claim victims, suspicions that have not been dispelled. Today, October 7, is the third anniversary of the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas against Israel in 2023 with the killing of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, which then led to Israel’s reaction and the bloody war in the Gaza Strip.
In Israel the alert is maximum. New attacks are feared, but at the same time the debate on security responsibilities has never died down and is now intertwined with the campaign for the upcoming political elections at the end of the month. The rest of the world calls for peace, which however seems like a utopia. The agreement reached on October 10, 2025, at the instigation of President Trump, ended the most intense fighting and allowed the release of the last Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, but the promised peace did not materialize.
The alert does not only concern the Middle East area in the strict sense. The Israeli Ministry for the Diaspora released a note according to which 262 protests and events defined as “anti-Israeli” are planned in 37 countries in a period of time up to October 14, with 75 demonstrations scheduled for October 7 itself. The United States, Spain, Australia, the United Kingdom and Italy will have the greatest number of scheduled demonstrations and events. The Israeli-American Council, an organization representing the Israeli community in the United States, sent a letter to over 100 US universities, including all Ivy League universities, urging them to prepare for possible clashes.
What happened on October 7, 2023
On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked military bases, villages, border kibbutzim and the Nova music festival. Civilian victims were hit in their homes or while trying to flee. The toll was around 1,200 deaths, over 250 people were kidnapped and deported inside the Gaza tunnels.
The attack caught the Israeli army and intelligence services by surprise. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a state of war, launching the military operation on Gaza. It was the beginning of a crisis throughout the Middle East that is still ongoing.
Hamas’s move
On Monday evening, unpublished images of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, taken in the days before his death, were released by the al-Qassam brigades. Hundreds of posts have relaunched the photos of the architect of the massacre from the last days in Rafah. They celebrated him with hymns, poems, red and green hearts, messages of admiration, praise. The video is read as an attempt to calm discontent with the organization. And all this is being done in view of the next elections because Hamas wants to maintain its control over Gaza.
The latest threat
As mentioned, in Israel today the alert is maximum and new attacks are feared. Major General Yaniv Asor, head of the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), threatened a “strong response” if Hamas attacks civilians or Israeli soldiers.
Speaking at a ceremony organized by the Eshkol Regional Council to commemorate the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack, Asor acknowledged the army’s “serious failure” to protect Israel that day, while praising the courage of the area’s residents for “defending their families and homes. The work is not finished yet, the path of rebirth is not complete.”
Appeals for peace
And even today the appeals for true peace are renewed. “The ceasefire of 10 October 2025 did not ensure security, sufficient humanitarian aid or a credible path to recovery and peace,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. After calling the attack organized by Hamas a “vicious and large-scale terrorist attack”, Guterres added that “the devastating hostilities that followed have inflicted untold suffering on the Palestinians in Gaza, including enormous loss of life, displacement and destruction. Their suffering must end now”.
“Israeli attacks continue – reported Guterres – at least 1,358 Palestinians have been killed in the enclave since the ceasefire came into force. Reconstruction, in the meantime, has just begun. More than a million people still live in precarious refugee camps, while families return to the damaged buildings at the risk of seeing them collapse”. The second phase of the American plan, the UN insists, should have included the disarmament of Hamas, the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces, a new Palestinian governance and the reconstruction of Gaza. “Almost a year into the agreement, these construction projects remain largely at a standstill.” According to Guterres, three years after October 7, the urgent task is no longer just to stop a war that has already devastated Gaza and shaken Israel, but to prevent a ceasefire without a political solution from turning into another form of permanent conflict.
Meloni: “You can’t remain indifferent”
“Three years ago, on 7 October 2023, the Hamas terrorist attacks massacred men, women and children, attacked young people gathered to listen to music, snatched innocent people from their families and dragged them into captivity. Today we remember the victims of that barbarism and renew our closeness to their loved ones, to those who suffered the horror of the kidnapping and to the Israeli people”, says Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in a note from Palazzo Chigi. “The time that has passed – he adds – does not attenuate the gravity of those crimes. No cause can justify the deliberate massacre of innocents. Remembering this also means renewing the commitment against every form of anti-Semitism”.
“Precisely in the name of protecting the entire civilian population involved, we cannot remain indifferent to the dramatic and unacceptable suffering of the inhabitants of Gaza or the growing violence of which Palestinian civilians in the West Bank are victims. The spiral of violence must be stopped”, adds Meloni. He then assures: “Italy will continue to work for a peace that guarantees security to Israelis and to Palestinians a future of freedom and dignity, in the perspective of two states living side by side within recognized borders. A future in which terrorism has no place and no child should grow up in fear and hatred”.