Two years ago today, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. In response, Israel has carried out a military campaign that has demolished 78% of the Gaza Strip, and killed 66,000 Palestinians according to local health authorities.
The Oct. 7, 2023 attacks fundamentally transformed Israel, Palestine, and the world in ways that will persist for years — regardless of whether Donald Trump's current peace negotiations succeed. Here's what has changed and what lies ahead.
How Israel Has Changed
The attacks triggered a dramatic shift in Israeli politics. "It's galvanized the entirety of Israeli public opinion and shifted it much further to the right than anything that we've seen in recent years," explains Eurasia Group Middle East expert Firas Maksad.
This shift has effectively ended any prospect for a two-state solution. Support among Israelis for expanding control over Palestinian territories and increasing settlements has surged from 34% to 47% since Oct. 2024, according to the Jerusalem based Jewish People Policy Institute.
Another significant change – prospects for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political future. Before the Oct. 7 attacks he seemed doomed amid mass protests over his attempts to control the courts. He was also facing corruption charges. The Oct. 7 attacks, and the subsequent war in Gaza, quickly shifted the focus elsewhere. But Netanyahu’s position is still fraught. Anger and protests over the failure to bring home the hostages have been steadily rising. His coalition depends on ultra far-right parties that oppose the Trump-brokered peace plan and are even more militant than Netanyahu. And those corruption charges are still hanging over him. The majority of Israelis believe he is responsible for the security failures on Oct. 7 and want him to resign.
His political fate now hinges on the ceasefire negotiations, Maksad says. If ceasefire talks collapse in the first phase – after hostages are released but before Israel withdraws – his coalition could survive. But full implementation of the pact would likely lead to his government collapsing. If he falls out of power he would lose immunity to corruption charges. It’s possible he could still work out a clemency deal, Maksad believes, that would allow him to "ride into the sunset, having cemented his legacy by defeating Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran."
How Palestine Has Changed
Gaza's destruction defies comprehension. Beyond the 78% of buildings destroyed, the territory has lost 98.5% of its cropland and 90% of its schools. Hamas is unlikely to return to political power any time soon. "They have proven inept and they have delivered little but misery and death to the Palestinian people," Maksad observes.
Hamas appears willing to relinquish governance to a third-party, but balks at Trump's proposal for international trusteeship to oversee Gaza. As Maksad explains, accepting outside control "runs against the grain of everything Hamas stands for" as an organization claiming to fight for Palestinian liberation.
However, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research found that a plurality of Gazans expected Hamas to remain in control of the strip after the war, though 40% supported the Palestinian Authority taking the reins. Two-thirds of those surveyed opposed the idea of an Arab security deployment like the one proposed in Trump’s plan. This suggests that further tensions over Gaza’s governance lie on the horizon as peace talks advance.
The West Bank faces its own crisis, with violence by armed Jewish settlers against Palestinians – often with the tacit support of the state – surging since Oct. 7. Settlements are expanding, the IDF has increased its incursions into the West Bank significantly, and five of 21 Israel’s cabinet ministers are now West Bank settlers, despite settlers comprising only 5% of Israel's population. The Palestinian Authority, starved of tax revenues by Israel, teeters on collapse.
How the Region Has Changed
Israel's military successes have dramatically reshuffled regional power dynamics. Iran's influence has crumbled as Israeli strikes have decimated two key parts of Tehran’s proxy network — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon – and inflicted significant damage on a third: the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Yet Israel's growing belligerence – Netanyahu proudly boasts of fighting a war “on seven fronts” – has strained the country’s burgeoning ties with the Gulf Arab monarchies and prompted new security relationships in the region. Following Israeli attacks on Qatar, Saudi Arabia announced a mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Meanwhile Egypt and Turkey, despite ideological differences, are conducting joint naval exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean — a clear warning to Israel.
The Abraham Accords – a 2020 Trump brokered deal to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates – now hang in the balance. After the Qatar strikes earlier this month, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan reportedly had a "screaming match" with Netanyahu, warning that such actions undermined the Abraham Accords. Trump's subsequent security guarantees to Qatar, following Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas leaders there, reflect his determination to not only preserve one of the crowning foreign policy achievements of his first term, but according to Maksad, “his future plans to expand them through Saudi-Israeli normalization.”
How the US-Israel Relationship Has Changed
American attitudes toward the Israeli government have shifted dramatically, with a new New York Times/Siena University poll revealing that the plurality of Americans believe the Israeli military is intentionally killing civilians. For the first time since the survey began in 1998, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis.
This decline in support among the US public mirrors a broader turn against Israel internationally, which was on stark display at the UN General Assembly last month, when representatives of 50 nations walked out ahead of Netanyahu’s speech. Israel's international isolation — Maksad calls it the worst "since its creation in 1948" — has made it even more dependent on Washington. The $22 billion in US aid since October 7 has been essential to Israel's military operations.
"Bibi is so beholden to Donald Trump and can't afford to be on the other side of him," Maksad concludes. This dependency may force Netanyahu to accept ceasefire terms he finds deeply uncomfortable – like language about a pathway towards a Palestinian state and Gaza being eventually reunited with the West Bank. And Trump has shown new willingness to constrain Israeli actions, forcefully rejecting West Bank annexation plans and prohibiting Palestinian displacement from Gaza.
Whether the ceasefire talks will be successful remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure two years into the war. "It's been a sea change,” says Maksad. “There is no going back to the Pre-Oct. 7 reality anytime soon."
