October 7 two years on: Israelis and Palestinians caught between two conflicting ideas of peace

When US president Donald Trump recently announced his 20-point peace plan for Israel and Hamas, he claimed the moment was: "Potentially, one of the great days ever in civilisation … and I'm not just talking about Gaza … the whole deal, everything getting solved. It's called peace in the Middle East." But there's a massive gap between the diplomatic stage and the harsh reality faced by ordinary people in both Israel and Gaza.

Two years after October 7, one Israeli wrote on X about the shock he experienced when the war began: "When the first reports started rolling in that the [IDF] outposts had been captured … I, a former observation platoon commander, knew that in those outposts there were also young female observers, without weapons, without real protection.

"A few months earlier, I managed to quit using [anxiety drug] Clonazepam. When I read the messages, heard the voices, I felt I was going to pass out. I took two tablets. On the same day, in the afternoon, I found myself checking the door to my flat multiple times. Not to lock it, just to make sure, as if checking would protect me."

This personal story, from a person in Tel Aviv, who was geographically far away from where the Hamas attack was taking place, is common among Israelis. To a people raised on stories of countless pogroms and the horror of the Holocaust, October 7 brought echoes of Israel's collective memories of innocents being yanked out of their homes by brutal killers.

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Notes for editors

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