Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel on Monday marked the first anniversary of the deadliest attack in its history, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the wars in Gaza and Lebanon would ensure the violence it endured last October 7 could never be repeated.

With troops battling Hamas and Hezbollah militants in what Israel says is a war for its very existence, people at vigils at massacre sites and rallies called for the return of hostages a year after their abduction.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, and with the trauma far from healed, families of the dead wept at a memorial at Kibbutz Reim, the site of the deadliest attack that day.

President Isaac Herzog led a moment of silence at 6:29 am – the exact time the attack began – at the kibbutz, the site of the Nova music festival where Hamas fighters killed at least 370 people.

Mourners also gathered in Tel Aviv, interceptors booming over Israel’s commercial hub as Hamas fired a barrage of rockets.

“It still feels surreal, like a nightmare that we are still supposed to wake up from eventually,” said resident Ariel Tamir.

In Jerusalem, Shir Siegel said the wait for her father’s return from captivity has been agonising.

“A year has passed but actually one long day has passed that feels like an eternity,” she told AFP.

Monday’s anniversary comes with Israel fighting in Gaza and in a new war to the north in Lebanon against Hamas ally Hezbollah, while also preparing to retaliate against Iran for last week’s missile attack.

- ‘Never again’ -

“We are changing the security reality in our region; for the sake of our children, for the sake of our future, to ensure that what happened on the seventh of October will not happen again. Never again,” Netanyahu said in a cabinet address.

“Never again” is a phrase associated with efforts to ensure the Holocaust and other genocides are not repeated.

US President Joe Biden said the attack was also a dark day for Palestinians, adding that too many civilians had suffered in a year of war, while reiterating his administration’s commitment to Israel’s safety.

Meanwhile, Hamas and its Lebanese allies vowed to keep fighting, with the Palestinian militants describing their attack on Israel as “glorious” and Hezbollah branding it a “cancerous” entity that must be “eliminated”.

Worldwide, events paid tribute to the victims of Hamas’s attack as others voiced support for the Palestinians after a year of war in Gaza.

Israel’s military said Monday at least four projectiles were fired from Gaza just minutes after the commemorations began, adding that it had “struck Hamas launch posts and underground terrorist infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip”.

Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement that it had fired rockets near the border with Gaza and at Tel Aviv.

The military said sirens sounded in northern and central Israel, which has come under daily rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza.

- Rally for hostages -

Early on October 7, 2023, the Hamas attack began with thousands of rockets fired at Israeli border communities.

At the same time militants stormed across the border and attacked nearly 50 different sites, including kibbutzim communities, army bases and the Nova music festival.

Militants killed festival-goers en masse and went door-to-door in farming communities, shooting residents dead in their homes.

Hours later, Israel launched a military offensive on Gaza that has reduced swathes of the territory to rubble, and displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million residents at least once amid an unrelenting humanitarian crisis.

Militants took 251 people hostage into Gaza, and 97 are still being held in the coastal territory, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

An Israeli campaign group on Monday announced the death of a Gaza hostage named Idan Shtivi, 28, who was abducted at the Nova festival.

In retaliation for the October 7 attack, Netanyahu vowed to crush Hamas and bring home all the hostages.

With Israel expanding the focus of its war to Lebanon, he promised to ensure tens of thousands of Israelis forced to flee Hezbollah fire are able to return to their homes.

Since last month, Israel has conducted massive strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon and launched ground operations across the border.

The war has killed more than 1,110 people in Lebanon and forced more than one million to flee their homes.

Israel’s military said its air force was launching extensive strikes across southern Lebanon on Monday. Lebanon’s health ministry said an overnight bombardment had killed 10 firefighters.

The military also said it had conducted a “targeted” strike in southern Beirut, Hezbollah’s main bastion.

To the south, Israel’s campaign in Gaza is far from over, with the military saying it has encircled the Jabaliya area after indications Hamas was rebuilding there.

Rescuers said 17 people, including nine children, were killed on Sunday by Israeli air strikes there.

- ‘The world stopped’ -

According to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, 41,909 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The figures have been deemed to be reliable by the United Nations.

On the ground, people yearn for the violence to end.

“It feels like the world stopped on October 7,” said one displaced woman, Israa Abu Matar, 26.

“I have grown old while watching my children hungry, scared, having nightmares and screaming day and night from the sound of the bombing and shells.”

The fighting in Gaza and Lebanon has been accompanied by the threat of war with Iran, which last week fired more than 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan in a September 27 strike on Beirut.

Tehran said on Sunday it had prepared a plan to hit back against any possible Israeli reprisal, before Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned Iran it could end up looking like Gaza or Beirut.

burs/ser/srm