On Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack of unprecedented scale and scope on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. The military incursion by land, sea, and air and associated barrage of missiles and rockets resulted in hundreds of deaths, prompting Israeli retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza that killed hundreds more and setting off a potential escalatory spiral. How did Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad pull off this attack? What happened to Israeli defenses and response? Where does the war go from here?