On October 7, 2023, a Hamas-led attack in Israel killed around 1,200 people, while 251 were taken hostage. Israel’s response in the three years since has utterly devasted Gaza and sparked off three other linked wars in Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen.Why did Hamas plan the attack, and three years later, where do Israel and Palestine stand?The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023UN investigations detail that the complex attack comprised an assault from the “land, sea, and air in conjunction with the launch of a large-scale rocket and mortar attack towards cities, towns and villages and military bases in southern and central Israel.”Executed across the day, the October 7 operation also saw attacks on several Israeli kibbutzim and the Nova music festival, assaults on Israeli beaches and arterial roads, and triggered the evacuation of nearly 150,000 people from their homes.Three years since, all Hamas-held hostages (both dead and alive) have been released, with the last batch of releases occurring as a result of a US-induced January 2025 ceasefire.On the other hand, Israel’s continuing military offensive in Gaza since October 2023 has killed over 70,000 Palestinians by conservative estimates, with Israeli actions characterised as a genocide by several states and human rights agencies, as well as a UN Commission of Inquiry.Israel is presently headed into its first elections since the attack, with the country’s longest-serving PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking yet another term.Story continues below this adWhat was Hamas’ strategic logic for October 7?Hamas’ October 7 attack occurred when it did as a result of two specific strategic conditions.First, in the 15 years before October 2023, Israel’s security calculus vis-à-vis Hamas had settled into a “quiet for quiet” approach. Besides the broader strategic goal of repelling Israeli occupation, Hamas’ own focus with Israel prioritised ‘sub-strategic’ goals such as the lifting of Israel’s stringent economic blockade on Gaza since 2007 and the release of over 5000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.There were new unwritten “rules of the game” in both IDF and Hamas parlance, which would be determined by “acceptable” and “unacceptable” acts.Moreover, Hamas’ own ability to deter a large Israeli offensive in Gaza had been proven by its intense exchanges of rocket fire (most prominently for 51 days in 2014). By 2018, Hamas’ abilities to threaten hinterland Israeli targets had grown sufficiently for its leader Yahya Sinwar to assert that whatever rockets hit Tel Aviv for 51 days in 2024, would be launched “within five minutes” if Israel carried out any offensive.Story continues below this adSince 2018, Israel had also let conditional aid trickle into Gaza as a result of negotiations with Hamas through Egypt, further contributing to Hamas’ perceptions of a vindication of its posture.This “balance” was sustained by an Israeli political interest in playing off Hamas against Fatah (in the West Bank) especially under Netanyahu, who fiercely defended allowing Qatari financial sustainment of Hamas across 2019 and 2020 as necessary to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.Even hard-right politicians such as Bezalel Smotrich (presently Israel’s Finance Minister and West Bank administrator) argued in 2015 that “Hamas is an asset, and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah) is a burden”.Second, Israel’s approach to removing the possibility of a Palestinian state (alongside an expansion of its settlement project in the West Bank) had taken on a regional character especially since 2020. Both the Abraham Accords of that year as well as subsequent Arab signaling of a de-prioritisation of the Palestinian issue brought the fundamental logic of resistance back to Hamas. Hence, as far as six months before October 7, Hamas’ then second-in-command Saleh al-Arouri had publicly declared that Palestinians had “between two to three years” before Israeli settlers in the West Bank increased to two million, making a “decisive”, “multi-front” war necessary in the “near term”.Story continues below this adA more specific window of opportunity was created due to Israel’s then ongoing domestic crisis featuring a tussle between the Netanyahu-led executive and the judiciary.This logic was supplemented by Hamas having increasingly integrated itself into Iran’s Axis of Resistance.But this architecture’s functioning was complicated. Iran’s Axis was built on a non-sectarian strategic logic but with deterrence and not war as the principal objective; a regional threat-in-being to counter Israel’s own regional approach to countering Iran. It became categorically evident on October 7 that Hamas wrested agency from the rest of the Axis, most of whom were then faced with a “now or never” scenario to fulfill their long-standing objective of defeating the Israeli state.However, even as Hezbollah became the only principal Shia force that initiated rocket/missile exchanges following October 7, then Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah repeatedly rationalised a limited approach and the rest of the Axis remained hesitant to act (until the Yemeni Houthi blockade in early 2024).Story continues below this adHence, immediately after the attack, Hamas returned to seeking sub-strategic concessions from Israel. Consequently, as the Qatari PM has stated on the record, Hamas was willing to release all hostages on the first day of the war.How did October 7 affect Israel’s security outlook?The October 7 attack dealt a huge dent to Benjamin Netanyahu’s image as Israel’s ‘Mr Security’. However, in retrospect its domestic political effects were more complicated.Israel’s security architecture was already working with a long-set outlook vis-à-vis Hamas that had been politically blessed by successive Israeli governments, including Netanyahu’s.However, Netanyahu’s domestic political crises and threats from the judiciary incentivised inaction before the attack despite warnings from both Egypt and UAE, while the attack itself necessitated aggressive action instead of accepting Hamas’ offer for hostage return. This latter posture was further supported by the hard-right lawmakers who propped up his government.Story continues below this adNow, Netanyahu’s electoral gamble is that his post-October 7 aggressive regional approach has yielded ‘successes’ that have been long necessary for Israeli security. This includes significant dents to Iran’s Axis; Hezbollah’s operational decimation in south Lebanon and northern Israel’s expanded security perimeter (a longstanding Israeli priority); Bashar al Assad’s fall in Damascus and a free rein for Israeli military operations in Syria, which has led to an expanded Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights; a US war on Iran; and Arab restraint in punitive actions against Israel.However, it is the continuity in regional conflict of which these ‘successes’ are a part that has enabled his opponents to keep the focus on October 7’s security failure.Nonetheless, the scale of regional shifts now means that beyond Netanyahu, there is a normalisation of an aggressive security posture. This is a security logic that combines past and future. Regardless of whether Netanyahu survives politically, this assertive outlook now arguably pervades Israel’s politico-security establishment at large, while Israel continues to resist international pressure against its continuing occupation and expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories.