Second anniversary of Hamas-led attack on Israel falls during Gaza truce negotiations

Nimrod Cohen was 19 and performing his military service when he was kidnapped from an Israeli tank on Oct. 7, 2023. Two years later, now 21, he remains a hostage in the enclave alongside 47 other people and is still believed to be alive.

His mother, Viki, has given multiple interviews, attended protests and traveled on delegations abroad since he was kidnapped, but she says her heart “is still on Oct. 7.”

Nimrod Cohen.  Family photo

“It’s Rosh Hashanah, Kippur, Sukkot, but for us, it’s not, it’s sad days, and we cannot celebrate until Nimrod will be back home,” she told NBC News. “I think many, many of the people in Israel feel the same. They feel that they cannot really celebrate unless the hostages will be back home.”

Nimrod should be home already, Cohen added, saying he was due to be released in the second phase of the ceasefire that fell apart in March when Israel launched a barrage of deadly airstrikes on Gaza.

Israeli strikes have killed over 66,000 people, including 18,430 in Gaza, according to a United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees report detailing the extent of the destruction in the strip after two years of war.

The agency, known as UNRWA, said that nearly all of Gaza's residents have been displaced, many multiple times, and that nearly 80% of structures across the enclave have been damaged or destroyed.

There have been at least 455 malnutrition-related deaths, including those of over 150 children, the report said, adding that war had also caused a spread of infectious diseases, including respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhea, scabies and skin rashes.

The report also cited the immense impact on health services, saying that "over 790 attacks on health workers, patients, hospitals, and other medical infrastructure in Gaza" had taken place and that less than 40% of hospitals remain functional.

Nearly 660,000 children had been forced out of school for a third year in a row, UNRWA said, while half a million girls lacked sufficient menstrual hygiene facilities.

A drone video captured families and friends paying respect today to the more than 370 people killed at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023.

Drone video captures memorial at Nova Music Festival site on Oct. 7 anniversary

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U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres today renewed his call for the release of all hostages and an end to the war in Gaza, calling for a peace process that allows Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully.

“A permanent ceasefire and a credible political process are essential to prevent further bloodshed & pave the way for peace,” he wrote on X, referring to Trump’s recent proposal.

The only path forward is “a just & lasting peace, in which Israelis, Palestinians & all the peoples of the region live side by side in security, dignity and mutual respect,” he added.

Khalil Al-Hayya, the head of the Hamas delegation taking part in peace talks in Egypt, said in an interview with Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera News television station today that his group had come "to conduct responsible and serious negotiations."

He added, "We do not forget to renew our great appreciation for all the efforts made by the Arab, Islamic and international countries and brothers, as well as the efforts of U.S. President Trump in seeking to stop this war and end it forever."

Al-Hayya was one of the main targets of an Israeli strike in Qatar last month, which killed his son.

Ahmed al-Agha worked as a sports journalist in Gaza before the war began, but he has since turned to covering political news whenever he can, amid the search for safety and the "struggle to find food."

Al-Agha said he has lost track of the number of times he has been displaced — “seven to 10 times,” he said — but he continues to move from one area to another “in search of safety.”

Ahmed Al-Agha.  NBC News

“Life has changed completely,” he told NBC News. “Some have lost their jobs, some have lost their relatives, some have lost family members, and some have lost friends.”

Al-Agha said that the pain of loss is “indescribable” and that each day feels “like a hundred years.” We have to “divide meals, divide flour and even share a single loaf of bread,” he said, “because of the famine we have experienced and continue to face in the Gaza Strip.”

A ceasefire “is the wish of every Palestinian,” he added. “There cannot be a normal life immediately after this war, but the Palestinian people are known for their love of life, their desire for coexistence, their passion for living, as long as there is a way.”

Netanyahu struck a defiant tone in a message on X reflecting on the Oct. 7 attacks.

“Together, we broke the Iranian axis; together, we changed the face of the Middle East; together, we will ensure the eternity of Israel,” he wrote. “Citizens of Israel: We are in fateful days of decision. We will continue to act to achieve all the war’s objectives: the return of all the hostages, the elimination of Hamas’ rule, and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”

When Sobhi Asour’s brother died in 2007, he took care of his 3-year-old son, raising him, marrying him off and later welcoming two granddaughters to the world.

But Asour's heart was broken when his adopted son died during the war, he said, hit by an Israeli airstrike. 

Sobhi Asour.  NBC News

“It was not his father who raised him; I was his father,” he told NBC News. “I took him as an orphan, lived with him and my children, raised him, married him, built for him. Everything is gone.”

Asour said he had lost “all desire for life” but swore he would never leave Gaza.

“We are heading into winter now,” he said. “Our tents are torn, and as you see, the sun scorches us. Winter is coming, and I hope it does not. We are thinking now how we will cover ourselves and our little children.”

In Gaza, “nothing here is like the rest of the world,” he said. “Even if you had a fortune, it would vanish.”

A displaced Palestinian woman at a camp in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip following an Israeli strike on Aug. 21. Eyad Baba / AFP via Getty Images

Berliners gathered in public today to pay tribute to the Israelis killed on Oct. 7 and call for the release of the hostages still in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

Shoes belonging to revelers at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on display at the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Berlin on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

People — including a woman holding a sign that reads, "Hamas out of Gaza!" — gather with Israeli flags in Berlin on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

The demonstrators projected the image of an Israeli flag on the Brandenburg Gate, along with the words "Bring Them Home Now." Meanwhile, items recovered from the Nova Music Festival massacre were put on display at an exhibition in the city.

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Nadja Wohlleben / Reuters

Udi Goren’s cousin Tal Haimi was killed in the Oct. 7 attacks, his body taken to Gaza, where it remains today.

Two years later, Goren, 44, can scarcely believe he’s still waiting to see his cousin, having been certain it would take only “weeks, maybe a couple of months,” before the war ended.

“I remember being here on the 100th day, and we thought it was insane that we made it to 100 days,” he told NBC News from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv.

Disappointed and angry, Goren said he wanted to support Trump's ceasefire deal, which he said could “end this catastrophe and bring everybody back home.”

“President Trump is supporting and pushing this deal very, very firmly,” he said. “And we see that he’s trying to hold up his commitment to ending wars, cutting deals and bringing peace.”

The Israel Defense Forces said two military reservists were "severely injured during combat" in the southern Gaza Strip earlier today. "The soldiers were evacuated to a hospital to receive medical treatment, and their families have been notified," the IDF said in a statement.

The war between Hamas and Israel should have ended in March, according to one analyst, saying the country has suffered on the international stage. 

Until the ceasefire this year, “I think there was a legitimacy from the international community about what Israel was doing,” said Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center.

There were “many achievements,” he added, “not only in Gaza, but also in Lebanon.”

But since Israel “decided to renew the war, we are sparking a new conflict, and the disadvantages of this period are much more than any achievements we had.”

Smoke rises from an Israeli strike in Gaza today. Chris McGrath / Getty Images

Now, Milshtein said, Israel faces “increasing isolation regarding the international community,” with “the majority of Israelis not supporting the war, and there is no clear strategy.”

The last six months have been “a catastrophe” for Israel, he said. 

New satellite imagery lays bare the sheer scale of the destruction in the Gaza Strip with two years of Israeli bombardment having turned much of the landscape into a wasteland.

The images show the Palestinian enclave from when the Israel-Hamas war began after Oct. 7, 2023, and from last month.

An estimated 80% of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed in that time, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

Read the full story here.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog commemorated the Oct. 7 attacks in a post on X and repeated calls for the release of all hostages in Hamas captivity.

"We will not rest, we will not be silent, until all 48 hostages are home," Herzog wrote.

"The story of Israel is the story of resilience, of a people who will never give up, never give in, and never stop believing that light will overcome the darkness," Herzog added.

Herzog also extended his thanks to Trump, commending the president for his "incredible efforts to bring all our hostages home and bring peace to the Middle East. I pray for the success of his efforts and the success of the negotiating teams."

Before-and-after video shows much of Gaza reduced to ruins

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Before-and-after video shows much of Gaza reduced to ruins after two years of war. The war in Gaza began after a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed over 1,000 people and led to the abduction of another 251.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticized pro-Palestinian protests planned for today, asking students not to participate in them.

"Today, on the anniversary of the atrocities of October 7, students are once again planning protests," he said in a piece published today in London's Times newspaper.

"This is not who we are as a country. It’s un-British to have so little respect for others," he said. "And that’s before some of them decide to start chanting hatred towards Jewish people all over again."

Student protesters march for Gaza in London today. Justin Tallis / AFP - Getty Images

There is little movement on the streets of Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel.

Three miles from the Gaza border, Be’eri was the single hardest-hit community in Hamas’ attack two years ago. In this kibbutz, 102 people were killed and more than 30 were kidnapped. 

The silence is broken by the buzz of construction tools, a sign that a family has chosen to rebuild here. But most of the 125 damaged and destroyed homes remain untouched, stuck in time for the past 730 days.

Food lay scattered across kitchen counters and pairs of shoes sit by front doors, as flowers bloom from the ashes of burned-out homes.

Banners hang from the eaves of many houses, a solemn reminder to mark where residents were either killed or kidnapped.

At the Ben Ami family home, two banners sway in the breeze — one with the face of Ohad Ben Ami, the other showing his wife, Raz. Inside the house, Ohad Ben Ami told NBC News what happened when the kibbutz was overrun two years ago.

He was with his wife, he said, sheltering in a safe room as Hamas militants approached with their guns drawn and firing.

Ohad Ben Ami stands in the house where he was kidnapped. Amir Levy / Getty Images

Gesturing with his hands in the air, Ohad described how he surrendered to the gunmen, proclaiming to them that he was the only one in the home as his wife remained hidden under a blanket.

“I was sure that they were going to lynch me,” Ohad said. Instead, they loaded him into a vehicle bound for Gaza, where he became one of the some 250 hostages taken by Hamas and other militant factions that day.

Ohad’s wife, Raz, faced a similar fate. She was discovered and kidnapped, too, held hostage for 54 days before her release. 

But Ohad languished as a prisoner of Hamas for 491 days — much of that time spent underground in Hamas’ vast tunnel system. Held with five fellow hostages, Ohad described how the group was overcome with anxiety and exhaustion.

“All of us were nervous, all of us hungry,” Ohad said. “They were starving us.” 

Earlier this year, in February, Ohad was released in a prisoner exchange. But from his home in Be’eri, where this ordeal began, he says that he often feels like he’s back in the tunnels beneath Gaza with those he left behind.

It’s a feeling he can’t shake, he said, until all the remaining hostages return home. 

Now, as negotiations are progressing in Egypt, he said he’s more encouraged than ever before.

“I’m very optimistic. Because the Arab states agreed to this, and Israel agreed to this, and Hamas agreed to this, and Donald Trump is knocking on the table,” he said. “It will happen, I’m telling you, this time it will be finished.”

Trump administration officials joined a group of Israeli hostage families and captivity survivors today for a breakfast at Washington's Kennedy Center inside the "Sukkah of Hope," a temporary dwelling built for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

The representatives from the U.S. government included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

"Families expressed deep gratitude for the administration’s leadership and reiterated the urgency of finalizing the agreement to ensure the immediate release of all hostages," according to a news release from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Trump administration officials joined a group of Israeli hostage families and captivity survivors today for a breakfast at Washington's Kennedy Center. Liri Agami

The captivity survivors who attended the breakfast included Noa Argamani and Keith Siegel.

Sukkot is a seven-day Jewish holiday celebrating the traditional gathering of the harvest. It started at sundown Monday and runs through Oct. 13.

Two years after the Oct. 7 attacks, Eyal Eshel still remembers the morning he lost contact with his daughter, 19-year-old soldier Roni Eshel.

From her post in the command room at the Nahal Oz base, less than a kilometer from the Gaza Strip, she never answered his calls that day.

“She didn’t answer for me on the phone from the moment of 6:23, actually, until today,” he told NBC News. “But I tried and I tried and I tried, for a long time, the whole day.”

Eshel said the feeling he had on Oct. 7 is “exactly the same feeling” he has today — with 48 hostages both dead and alive still trapped in Gaza — something he holds the government accountable for.

‘Sorry, I wasn’t here to save you’: Bereaved father visits site of daughter’s Oct. 7 death

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“We are in a big s---,” he said. “It’s not the same Israel.”

In ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, “everything” could still cause talks to fail, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said today.

“We are dealing with a terrible terror organization; these are not normal people,” he told NBC News from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. “And therefore everything that might go wrong, might go wrong, so to speak.”

Israel and Hamas are conducting indirect talks over Trump’s plan to halt the two-year war and free the remaining hostages from Gaza.

Lapid said the ongoing negotiations are the “most serious effort” so far. 

“President Trump has contributed to this so much of his time and effort,” he added. “We are thankful and grateful and yet there’s so many obstacles.”

Israeli opposition leader weighs in on peace talks

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Doaa Basem al-Masri had graduated from university with honors and dreamed of studying abroad to continue her research on cancer cells when the war broke out.

Once living in a house that had “all the necessities, electricity, food, water,” the pharmacist now lives in makeshift accommodation in a school, sharing a two-by-two-meter space with nine other members of her family, where they sleep, eat, and store their belongings in the same place.

“There is no longer a university, no home, no country — nothing left of these dreams,” she told NBC News. “We are only struggling through our days to survive, hoping to hear of a truce or even a temporary ceasefire so that we can catch a breath from this devastating war.”

Despite the hardships, Al-Masri has continued to run a pharmacy, which she says has been relocated “four or five times” during the war and requires her to walk long distances every day to visit patients in their tents. 

Doaa Basem Al-Masri.  NBC News

Top U.S. officials have paid tribute to the victims of the Oct. 7 attacks, calling for peace in the region and the release of all hostages.

Hamas “murdered more than 1,200 innocent men, women, and children — including 46 Americans — in the most brutal terrorist attack in Israel’s history,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement this morning.

Under Trump, “America is leading the effort to secure the release of all hostages, end Hamas’s rule in Gaza, and advance a durable peace that ensures not only Israel’s security, but generational peace and prosperity for the region.”

Vice President JD Vance echoed Rubio’s tribute to the victims, adding that the U.S. was working toward Trump’s ceasefire plan “to bring the remaining hostages home and build a lasting peace for all. 

Israel marks 2 years since Oct. 7 attacks amid peace negotiations

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Across Israel this morning, there were somber gatherings to mark the attacks two years ago, including in the country's south, where families and friends paid respects to the more than 370 victims killed at the Nova music festival.

But on the day of pain and remembrance, hopes of diplomacy are rising, as Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner head to Egypt to push talks to implement the president’s peace plan, which would drive Hamas from power, and free the remaining hostages.

Leaders across Europe have marked the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks with a series of tributes.

"Two years after the unspeakable horror of Hamas terrorism, the pain remains deep," French President Emmanuel Macron posted on X. "We stand in solidarity with all the victims, including 51 of our fellow citizens."

His tributes were echoed by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who condemned the "brutal, cold-blooded torture of Jews in their homes."

"Since that awful day, so many have endured a living nightmare," he posted on X.

Both leaders, together with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, called for the immediate release of all hostage and a ceasefire.

"Our priority in the Middle East remains the same — release the hostages. Surge aid into Gaza," Starmer added. "And a ceasefire that can lead to a lasting and just peace as a step towards a Two-State solution.

 Ahmad Gharabli / AFP via Getty Images

Protesters gathered at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv today, calling for the return of the Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip for two years.

The Hamas delegation taking part in talks seeks to overcome "all obstacles" to achieving an agreement that meets the aspirations of the people in Gaza, senior official Fawzi Barhoum said today.

These include a permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of the Israeli military, unrestricted entry of aid, a prisoner exchange deal, and a reconstruction plan under a technocratic Palestinian national body, he said, adding that the group has responded to Trump's plan responsibly.

"We renew our pledge to adhere to all our steadfast national rights, and to defend our heroic people’s aspirations for liberation, reform, and independence," he added.

As negotiations continue today in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, the country's foreign minister, Badr Abdel Atty, said he had also spoken with Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff who is on his way to Egypt.

"Tomorrow, we’ll be joined by U.S. sides as well," he told reporters, without giving details about the present status of the negotiations.

"We are doing our best to reach a solution and to reach a solution that will ensure the end of this atrocious war," he added.

Israelis are still traumatized by Oct 7, an analyst of the region says, leading the nation to continue to believe “whatever they do is justified.”

“Israelis are still there on Oct. 7, still in the trauma, still in the belief that whatever they do is justified,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at U.K think tank Chatham House, told NBC News.

For Palestinians and the rest of the world, however, “what has happened since then has changed their perspective, not at what happened on Oct. 7, but how they deal with Israel,” Mekelberg said.

Israel had become “isolated internationally,” he added. “As horrific as Oct. 7 was, and it was horrific, it doesn’t justify what Israel has done since then."

An Israeli soldier pays his respects to victims of the attacks. Chris McGrath / Getty Images

A visitor at the Nova music festival memorial site pays respects today.  Kobi Wolf / Bloomberg via Getty Images

It is too early to be either pessimistic or optimistic about Trump's Gaza ceasefire and hostage release plan, a spokesperson for one of the mediators, Qatar, said today.

“We are listening to all parties,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told reporters in Doha. “These talks will need some time. Days will go on as we develop the ideas further.”

There are about 20 points whose details need to be worked out, he said, adding that the obstacles lay not in approving the plan but in implementing it quickly.

Al-Ansari did not provide more details on the status of negotiations.

Israel has received $21.7 billion in military aid from the United States since the Oct. 7 attack, according to a report published today by the Costs of War project based at Brown University.

"Israel’s entire inventory of combat capable aircraft comes from the U.S.," according to the project, which is housed at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs and whose findings have been cited by American presidents, including Trump.

An Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft flies over Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Jun. 17. Bashar Taleb / AFP via Getty Images file

Israel's combat arsenal includes 75 F-15s, 196 F-16s, and 39 F-35s, as well as attack and transport helicopters — all of U.S. origin, it said, making the U.S. the main source of weapons being used in Gaza.

The Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s response have changed the political landscape across across the Gulf region.

Saudi Arabia had been preparing to normalize relations with Israel before Hamas' attack, but its criticism of the Israeli government has gotten louder since then. And while the powerful Gulf monarchy has watched its main rival Iran and its proxies weakened during the past two year, the threat from Yemen's Houthis has been deeply destabilizing.

Meanwhile, tiny but wealthy Qatar has faced missiles from both Iran and Israel, leading to an unprecedented pledge from Trump to defend Qatar militarily. This is a promise that will change the Middle East.

Trump's 20-point ceasefire plan is an attempt to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. Leaders in the Gulf will be praying it works.

Parties negotiating a ceasefire deal in Gaza are discussing a security mechanism that would ensure a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, according to reports from Egyptian state-owned media citing the nation's Foreign Ministry.

Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel were set to begin yesterday in Cairo.

Trump’s ceasefire plan demands that Hamas disarm and does not immediately order the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Hamas has long stipulated a full Israeli withdrawal as part of any deal.

Discussions have also centered around full access to aid through U.N. channels and a just peace process based on a two-state solution, according to the report.

Alaa Abu Daraz and her children left their home in eastern Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Two years later, they are yet to return, living on the streets and seeking safety throughout the Palestinian enclave.

The former medical secretary says she has been displaced 10 times, and fears the cold of winter as her family struggles for even the most basic necessities. 

Alaa Abu Daraz.  NBC News

Two years ago, Gal Gilboa-Dalal went to the Nova festival to watch over his brother, Guy. Today, his brother is one of the 20 hostages held in Gaza still believed to be alive.

Guy Gilboa-Dalal.  Family handout

Going to the festival "is the worst part," he told NBC News, "because I returned without him."

Watching a video released by Hamas on Oct. 7, of his brother in captivity, was "the worst part of my life, the worst moment in my life," he said.

"I keep thinking about the moment he didn’t go in my car, and how he could go back with me, and how things could have gone differently," Gilboa-Dalal said. "Ever since I came back, my heart and life are dedicated to Guy and to bring him back and the other hostages."

German Chancellor Federich Merz said he was placing "great hope" on negotiations but was looking with concern at his own country, saying Germany was experiencing a "new wave" of antisemitism.

"It manifests itself in old and new guises — on social media, at universities, on our streets; ever louder, ever more brazen, and increasingly often in the form of violence," he said in a video posted by the German government on X today.

"I am ashamed by this– as Chancellor, as a German, as part of the post-war generation that grew up with the promise, 'Never again,'" he added.

A series of blasts shook the Gaza Strip this morning with video shot from southern Israel showing thick columns of smoke rising above the enclave.

Smoke rises over Gaza after Israeli bombardment, as seen from kibbutz Kfar Aza. Ohad Zwigenberg / AP

Israeli airstrikes continued even after Trump called for Israel to halt the bombing last week, saying that Hamas was ready for peace.

Hamas' media office in Gaza said today that more than 100 people had been killed in Gaza during the last 72 hours.

Nearly 11 months after he was taken hostage by Hamas, Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin was found dead in Gaza, his body recovered in a tunnel under Rafah.

He had just turned 23 when he was taken, and had planned to travel the world. 

Ever since the war began, before and after Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s death, his parents along with the families of other hostages, have relentlessly urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, as well as the international community, to focus on the plight of their loved ones.

Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin. Dmitry Solovyov / NBC News

“I know these families, I don’t want any of their mothers to be like me,” his mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, told NBC News. “I will be so happy and relieved for them when they have their children back in their hands.”

Netanyahu says that could happen in the coming days, as negotiators gather in Egypt to discuss Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The terms of the deal say that, if Hamas gives up their weapons, its members will be granted amnesty. 

But Rachel Goldberg-Polin remains resolute, her grief tempered by her desire to see the remaining hostages return.

“I don’t have this fiery venomous anger that I think wouldn’t serve me in any purpose,” she said. “Nothing can bring Hersh back.”

Hersh Goldberg-Polin.  Courtesy Jonathan Polin

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza over the last two years has triggered a humanitarian crisis of an “unprecedented scale,” according to a spokesperson at Human Rights Watch, accusing it of committing war crimes of “biblical proportions.”

Living conditions in Gaza “have become simply just unfit for human survival,” Ahmed Benchemsi told NBC News, whose organization investigates and reports on human rights abuses.

Palestinian children collect belongings from the rubble after an Israeli strike on Gaza City on Sept. 30. Saeed M. M. T. Jaras / Anadolu via Getty Images

People are facing shortages of food, drinking water, shelter, medical care, there’s a famine,” he said. “I’m not even factoring in the bombings, which are continuing, I’m just talking about the conditions of life.”

Civilian infrastructure has been “almost fully destroyed, including schools, universities, hospitals, you name it,” he added.

Benchemsi said that Israel was responsible for “not several, but innumerable war crimes,” including the mass displacement of the entire population, “not once, not twice, but multiple times.”

“It’s hell on earth,” he added. “What can I say?”

As Israel marked two years since the Hamas-led terror attacks, residents of Tel Aviv remembered loved ones and some dared hope that Trump's plan to stop the fighting in Gaza and return hostages would bear fruit.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that there may be some closure," Tallie Lieverman said. "Most importantly to release our hostages, bring them home after 731 days, and start to see some remnant of a future plan."

Israelis ‘cautiously optimistic’ over Trump’s Gaza plan

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The Oct. 7 attacks and the Israel-Hamas war that followed has transformed the geopolitics of the region and upended the balance of power, according to Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

“What has happened in the past two years is as important and transformative as the Arab-Israeli wars in 1967 and 1973,” he told NBC News, referring to conflicts that reshaped Israel’s borders and saw the country occupy east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Using its “superior hard power to impose its geopolitical vision,” Israel is now the supreme power in the region, Gerges added. 

What’s also distinctive about the current war, Gerges added, is the “radical change in the U.S.’ role.”

“Israel now leads from the front, while the United States follows,” he said.

Gerges also expressed doubt that Trump’s plan could bring peace to the Middle East, “or even a lasting ceasefire.”

“We have been here before,” he said. “Netanyahu will not end his war in Gaza without real pressure by Trump.”

Evyatar David was partying at the Nova music festival in southern Israel when he was kidnapped by Hamas militants. 

Two years later, he is still believed to be alive after Hamas released a video in August of David, now 24, looking so frail and emaciated that his father did not recognize his voice.

A screengrab from a video released by Hamas shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David looking weak and malnourished.  Hostages and Missing Families Forum / NBC News

“I couldn’t watch the video at all,” his brother, Ilay David, told NBC News in Jerusalem last week. “I saw it by mistake several times and I listened to Evyatar’s voice for very, very short, like three seconds out of it and it was enough to see that he’s half the man he used to be.”

Ilay David says he is certain that his brother is still alive, but despite signals from Trump and Netanyahu that the hostages could return soon, he refuses to get his hopes up too high, “because then disappointment would be terrible.”

From left, Ilay David; Evyatar David; their parents, Galia and Avishay David; and their sister, Ye'ela David.  Family photo

“We have to put all the pressure on Hamas to accept it, because right now everyone else has accepted it,” he added. “But I’m still worried. I mean, I don’t know if we’ll see all the hostages coming back in three days. It sounds like a dream to me.”

Two years on, Ilay David continued, “it feels like I’m on the same day. It’s still October the 7th.”

President Donald Trump said he was confident that a Gaza deal would be reached "soon."

“I think we’re going to have it soon," he told reporters last night at the Oval Office. "It’s a hard thing for me to say that when for years and years they’ve been trying to have a deal with Gaza. "

"But we’re going to have a Gaza deal. I’m pretty sure."

Families held a minute's silence at the site of Israel’s Nova music festival this morning to remember the victims of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

People gather at the former site of the Nova music festival this morning. Chris McGrath / Getty Images

The site has since become a memorial, and dozens of relatives paid their respects at 06:29 a.m., the time the assault began.