The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands

On the morning of Saturday, October 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli settlement along the Gaza border. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family's reinforced safe room, urging their children not to cry while they listened to the gunfire from Hamas attackers outside their windows. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: "They're here."

Some 45 miles to the north, on the shores of Tel Aviv, Amir's parents saw the news at the same time that they received Amir's note. Still dripping from an early-morning swim, they jumped in their car and raced toward Nahal Oz, armed only with a pistol--but intent on saving their family at all costs.

In The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells his family's harrowing story in full for the first time, describing their terrifying ordeal--and the bravery that ultimately led to their rescue--alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harm's way for decades, with no end in sight. This dynamic of purposeful hostility between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors will need to be fundamentally dismantled, he shows, if the region is to have any hope of peace. With deep sensitivity and drawing on Israeli and Palestinian sources as well as original interviews with the police officers and soldiers who fought alongside his parents on 10/7, Tibon offers an unsparing but ultimately hopeful view of this seemingly intractable conflict and its global reverberations.