Incredibly powerful [The Gates of Gaza is] a rescue story, but also a reported history of the tragedy that is Israels Gaza policy. It helped me to understand how we got to this horrible point.”Susan Glasser, staff writer, The New Yorker

A gripping first-person account of how one Israeli grandfather helped rescue two generations of his family on October 7, 2023a saga that reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures behind Hamas’s attacks that day.

On the morning ofOctober 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli communityless than a mile from Gaza City. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the familys reinforced safe room, urging them not to cry as gunfireechoed just outside the door. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: The girls are behaving really well, but Im worried theyll lose patience soon and Hamas will hear us.

Some 45 miles north, Amirs parentshad just cut short an early morning swim along the shores of Tel Aviv. Now, they jumped in their Jeep and sped toward Nahal Oz,armed only with a pistol but intent on saving their family at all costs.

InThe Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells this harrowing story in full for the first time. He describes his family’s ordealand the bravery that ultimately led to their rescuealongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harms way for decades.

Woven throughout is Tibon’s own expertise as a longtime international correspondent, as well as more than thirty original interviews: with residents of his kibbutz, with the Israeli soldiers who helped to wrest it from the hands of Hamas, and with experts on Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the failed peace process. More than one family’s odyssey,The Gates of Gazais the intimate story of a tight-knit community and the broader saga of war, occupation, and hostility between two national movementsa conflict that has not yet extinguished the enduring hope for peace.