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

by Tibon, Amir

• ISBN13: 9780316580960
• ISBN10: 0316580961
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780316580984
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-09-24
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• More Book Details

Summary

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award | Winner of the 2026 Wingate Prize | Winner of the Bernstein Prize | Winner of the 2026 Sami Rohr Prize

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

On the morning of October 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli community less than a mile from Gaza City.

Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family’s reinforced safe room, urging them not to cry as gunfire echoed just outside the door. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: “The girls are behaving really well, but I’m worried they’ll lose patience soon and Hamas will hear us.”

Some 45 miles north, Amir’s parents had 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.

In The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells this harrowing story in full for the first time. He describes his family's 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.

More than one family's odyssey, this is the intimate story of a tight-knit community and the broader saga of war, occupation, and hostility between two national movements—a conflict that has not yet extinguished the enduring hope for peace.

Author Biography

Amir Tibon is an award-winning diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz, Israel’s paper of record, and the author of The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas (co-authored with Grant Rumley), the first-ever biography of the leader of the Palestinian Authority. From 2017-2020, Tibon was based in Washington, DC as a foreign correspondent for Haaretz, and he also has served as a senior editor for the newspaper’s English edition. He, his wife, and their two young daughters are former residents of Kibbutz Nahal Oz but are currently living as internal refugees in northern Israel.