Dear Editor,

A year ago Israel suffered a brutal assault at the hands of Hamas gunmen. The consequences are still unfolding.

The initial Israeli Government response – a retaliatory bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip – has morphed into a wider conflict that now sees fighting in Lebanon and has drawn in other regional players, notably Iran.

Our articles to mark the anniversary of the October 7 attack focus on what a year of conflict has meant to the civilians caught up in the violence. Migration scholars Nick Micinski of the University of Maine and Kelsey Norman of Rice University provide a snapshot of the massive displacement across the Middle East. In all, more than three million people have been uprooted over the past 12 months.

Israelis in the north have left homes threatened by Hezbollah rockets, while Lebanese families have fled the south and major cities to avoid Israeli missiles (many have even crossed over into civil war-torn Syria). And then there are the nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have been displaced multiple times as they try to find safety while trapped in the enclave.

Maha Nassar writes about another plight of Palestinians: democratic representation. A year of conflict has seen the already-dwindling support that the main Palestinian parties – the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Hamas – had ebb away further, creating major barriers to any postwar governance plans. What is clear is that Palestinians are crying out for better options and a direct say on who represents them through means of a national election – something a generation of Palestinians have never known.

Meanwhile, Shai Ginsburg, a scholar of Israeli history and politics, looks at how the plight of hostages taken on October 7 has bled into the polarisation of Israeli society. In the initial shock of that attack, some hoped that a prevailing sense of national unity might replace the bitter pre-existing societal and political divides. Instead, the yearlong campaign by families of those taken – and even how the hostages are being remembered today – has become a symbol of the deep fissures that still exist in Israel.

Matt Williams