Caption: Members of the Australian Jewish community hold a banner and placards bearing the portraits of Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants during a rally in Sydney on October 7, 2025, to mark the two-year anniversary of the attack by Hamas on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.

 

JERUSALEM – Israel marked the second anniversary of the October 7 attack on Tuesday, as Hamas and Israeli negotiators held indirect talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza under a US-proposed peace plan.

Two years ago to the day, at the close of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, Hamas-led militants launched the deadliest attack on Israel in the country’s history, sparking a huge retaliatory offensive in Gaza.

The attack shocked the world, with Palestinian fighters breaching the Gaza-Israel border, and storming southern Israeli communities and a desert music festival with gunfire, rockets and grenades.

It resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also took 251 people hostage into Gaza, of whom 47 remain captive, including 25 the Israeli military says are dead.

On Tuesday, senior Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum called the October 7 attack a “historic response” to Israel’s bid to “eradicate the Palestinian cause”.

He also said Hamas was working to “surmount all obstacles” to sealing a deal in Egypt.

Two years on from the October 7 attack, global pressure to end the war has escalated massively, with much of Gaza flattened, a UN-declared famine unfolding and Israeli hostage families still longing for their loved ones’ return.

A UN probe last month accused Israel of genocide in Gaza while rights groups have accused Hamas of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the October 7 attack. Both sides reject the allegations.

Last week, US President Donald Trump unveiled a 20-point peace plan calling for a ceasefire, the release of all the hostages, Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The plan received positive responses from both Israel and Hamas and prompted talks in Egypt, with negotiators beginning indirect discussions on Monday.

According to two Palestinian sources close to the Hamas negotiating team, the talks were resuming on Tuesday in the Red Sea town of Sharm El-Sheikh.

On Wednesday, Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will join the talks, according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.

“The primary guarantee of success at this stage is US President Trump himself… even if it comes to a point to require him imposing a vision,” he said.

 ‘She’s with me’

In Israel, dozens of relatives and friends of those killed at the Nova music festival lit candles and held a minute’s silence at the site of the attack, where militants killed more than 370 people and seized dozens of hostages.

Orit Baron, whose daughter Yuval was killed at the festival with her fiance Moshe Shuva, told AFP that October 7 was a “black” day for her family.

“Now it’s two years. And I’m here to be with her, because this is the last time that she was alive,” the 57-year-old mother said at the site of the attack, adding she felt “that right now she’s with me here”.

Another ceremony was due in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, where weekly rallies have kept up calls for the captives’ release.

“Release the hostages, unconditionally and immediately,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

“Put an end to the hostilities in Gaza, Israel and the region now. Stop making civilians pay with their lives and their futures.”

 ‘Now, not tomorrow’

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,160 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.

Their data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that over half of the dead are women and children.

“I don’t know when this war will end. My dream is for the war to end now, not tomorrow,” said Abeer Abu Said, a 21-year-old in Gaza who lost seven family members in the war.

“I don’t trust anyone — from the Israeli negotiators or even Hamas — they all lie to us. Negotiations for the sake of negotiations, while we die every minute.”

In Egypt’s resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, mediators were shuttling between Israeli and Hamas delegations under tight security.

Egypt’s Abdelatty said that negotiations were aimed at implementing a “first phase” of the agreement, “to create conditions for the release of the hostages, the access for aid, and the release of Palestinian prisoners”.

“This, therefore, requires the redeployment of Israeli forces so that we can work to implement this phase,” he added.

Trump has urged negotiators to “move fast” to end the war, but Israeli strikes continued on Tuesday, killing four people according to Gaza’s civil defence agency — a rescue force operating under Hamas’s authority — and a local hospital.

Qatar, a key mediator in the conflict, said Israel should already have ceased fire under Trump’s plan.

“It was supposed to actually cease fire if the statements made by the prime minister there regarding adherence to the Trump plan were true,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told reporters in Doha.

Trump told Newsmax TV that “I think we’re very, very close to having a deal… I think there’s a lot of goodwill being shown now. It’s pretty amazing actually”.

Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir has warned that if the negotiations fail, the military will “return to fighting” in Gaza. (AFP)