Israel marks the third 7 October with a 6:29 start and a Yarkon Park ceremony at 21:15

Israel is marking Wednesday as three years since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. The attacks killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages into Gaza. Ynet reported that most of the day's memorials and protests would be led by the October Council, protest organisations and the Kumu movement, with events planned at about 400 locations.

The day on the calendar is not the same as the state memorial day. Ynet noted that Wednesday comes two days after the official memorial. The IDF held its own ceremonies at 6:29 on Monday, the hour the attack began, in every sector where it operates. Flags were lowered to half-mast. Wednesday repeats the hour in public, outside the military timetable.

Ynet's schedule opens at 6:29 with ceremonies, installations and events. The Nova music festival site in the Re'im forest is one of the named places. So is the Sha'ar HaNegev arches junction, where the flag was to be lowered to half-staff. Later in the day the outlet described convoys, demonstrations, a nationwide minute of silence, and sessions at which people would give testimony. The evening event is set for 21:15 at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, for bereaved and affected families. Ynet said it would be hosted by Eli Sharabi, a survivor of captivity in Gaza.

Sharabi's role is the detail that distinguishes this ceremony from a platform of officials. A former hostage is the host of the central public event on the anniversary, not a minister reading a text. The state memorial on Monday was the institutional date. Mount Herzl in Jerusalem was the site where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke, saying Israel would keep pursuing those who carried out the attack and held hostages, and that Hamas rule in Gaza would end. Wednesday's park ceremony is organised in large part by the families' and protest bodies that have spent three years at odds with the government over inquiry, responsibility and the conduct of the war.

The hostage count has changed since 2023. At a UN event on 6 October, US ambassador Mike Waltz said that a year ago 48 hostages were still underground, including two Americans, and that this was the first 7 October commemoration at which every hostage was out: the living with their families, the dead returned for burial. UN Security Council resolution 2803, which Waltz said passed 13-0, endorsed a US plan for a Gaza without Hamas rule, demilitarisation, an international stabilisation force, and reconstruction. A ceasefire associated with that plan has not stopped killing. The Sydney Morning Herald, citing local health authorities, reported that about 1,500 Gazans had been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire began, on top of an estimated 73,000 Palestinians killed during the war.

Defence minister Israel Katz said on Monday that about 6,000 attackers crossed the border on 7 October, that 4,000 had been killed, and that he and Netanyahu had ordered the military to pursue the remaining 2,000, from the most senior to the most junior. That order is the military fact sitting under Wednesday's memorials. The ceremonies remember the dead. The order describes a hunt that the government says is not finished.

The 6:29 start is a clock, not a slogan. It is the minute the barrier crossings and the first shootings are marked in Israeli accounts of the morning. Holding the public events at that minute, two days after the IDF did the same, fixes the anniversary to the attack rather than to a convenient hour. Yarkon Park at 21:15 is the other end of the same day: a large city park, a former hostage as host, and the families who have treated the official memorial as incomplete.

About 400 sites is Ynet's figure for the spread, not a police count of attendance. Nova and Sha'ar HaNegev are the places where the geography of the attack is still the geography of the memorial. The rest of the list runs through towns that lost people and through city squares that have hosted weekly protests. By night the focus the organisers have named is one park in Tel Aviv, and one former captive on the stage.