The Gates of Gaza

The gripping, true story of how leading Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued on 7 October 2023 by Tibon’s father – an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures that led to Hamas’s attacks that day.

On that fateful day, 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 them not to cry while they all listened to the gunfire from Hamas attackers outside their windows. With his mobile 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 neighbours in Gaza in harm’s 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 Gaza 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.

‘The Gates of Gaza flawlessly weaves history and adventure together so the reader – although we know there was a successful outcome – is still gripped with fear for the Tibon family, trapped for 10 hours in the safe room of their kibbutz home. It is the stuff of nightmares.‘
-Jenni Frazer, Jewish News

‘This is an important book. To say The Gates of Gaza is gripping is an understatement; it reads like a thriller … My heart was in my mouth … This personal and very painful book should disabuse anyone of the notion that there are easy answers for the Jewish state.‘
-Jennifer Lipman, The Jewish Chronicle

‘More than an account of horror, Amir Tibon’s riveting book is a story of courage. Tibon’s extraordinary family and community offer a glimpse into Israel’s resilience, and help explain why it may be premature to despair over the hope for peace.‘
-Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, and author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

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.