Gaza Civilians Participated in the October 7 Attack

The October 7 attack is typically described as a Hamas operation. This is accurate — Hamas planned, organized, and led it. But multiple lines of evidence document that non-Hamas Gaza civilians also crossed the border and participated in the attack, including in looting, abductions, and violence.

• IDF and surveillance footage from the border crossing points shows not only uniformed Hamas fighters but crowds of civilian men crossing into Israel in the hours after the breach — after the fence was down and the immediate military perimeter was secured by Hamas.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that Gaza civilians joined the attack to loot kibbutz homes and businesses, and in some cases participated in abductions.
• Nova festival survivors described attackers who appeared to be in civilian clothes, not military kit — some survivors initially mistook them for rioters rather than soldiers.
• The New York Times reported that some hostages, once brought into Gaza, were held not by Hamas fighters in tunnels but by civilian Gazan families in their homes. For example, Noa Argamani and three other hostages were rescued in June 2024 from apartments in Nuseirat, and released soldier Agam Berger said she was held mostly in homes with Palestinian families.
• Times of Israel reported specifically that civilians who participated in the attack held hostages in residential apartments.

Under ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law, Rule 6:

Civilians are protected against attack unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.

A Gaza civilian who crossed the border to loot kibbutz homes, assist in abductions, or participate in violence was, at that moment, a direct participant in hostilities — and therefore not a protected civilian under the laws of armed conflict.

This matters in two ways:

1. The October 7 framing: The attack was not purely a military operation by an armed group against soldiers. It involved civilian participation in violence against other civilians.
2. The Gaza death toll framing: The Gaza Health Ministry's totals do not distinguish civilians from combatants; estimates of the civilian share vary widely and are disputed. The evidence that civilians participated in October 7 — and that some continued to be involved in hostage-holding afterward — means the civilian designation in some cases requires the same scrutiny as the Hamas combatant designation.

This evidence does not mean all Gaza civilians are combatants or that civilian casualties are acceptable. The vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents had no involvement in October 7 and are not combatants.

What it does mean:

• The line between "Hamas fighter" and "Gaza civilian" was, on October 7, crossed by an unknown number of people who were neither formal Hamas members nor innocent bystanders.
• Some hostage-holding involved ordinary civilian families — which is a war crime regardless of who commits it.
• Claims about civilian death tolls in Gaza require the same careful sourcing as claims about combatant death tolls, because the categories are not as cleanly separated as the framing suggests.