‘I’m not going to feel safe until I touch New Zealand soil.’

Labour and National have gone negative in the last days of the campaign.

The brazen attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel that began on Saturday will be seen as a turning point in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with far-reaching repercussions, analysts say.

The multi-pronged attack saw as many as 1000 assailants infiltrate Israeli territory, kill hundreds of soldiers and civilians, and take dozens of hostages back into Gaza. It was like nothing Israel had seen since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel pledged revenge, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing "mighty vengeance." Hamas said it was prepared for all scenarios.

LIVE UPDATES: Follow rolling coverage of the Israel-Hamas crisis here

"Things will change forever," said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.

There is nothing in Israeli history that compares to this attack, he said.

"Hamas will no longer be Hamas that we knew years ago," Michael, who previously served as the deputy director general and head of the Palestinian desk at Israel's Ministry for Strategic Affairs, said.

Hamas said the attack was retribution for what it described as attacks on women, the desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the ongoing siege of Gaza.

Here's what we know about the group

What is Hamas?

An Islamist organisation with a military wing, Hamas first came into being in 1987.

It was an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist group that was founded in the late 1920s in Egypt.

The word "Hamas" is itself an acronym for "Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamiyya" – Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement.

The group, like most Palestinian factions and political parties, insists that Israel is an occupying power and that it is trying to liberate the Palestinian territories.

It considers Israel an illegitimate state.

READ MORE: Shocking dashcam shows festival attendees shot point-blank

Unlike some other Palestinian factions, Hamas refuses to engage with Israel.

In 1993, it opposed the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) that saw the PLO give up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The Accords also established the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas presents itself as an alternative to the PA, which has recognized Israel and has engaged in multiple failed peace initiatives with it.

The PA, whose credibility among Palestinians has suffered over the years, is led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

The group has over the years claimed many attacks on Israel and has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union, and Israel.

READ MORE: Hamas threatens to execute Israeli hostages in Gaza

The US State Department in 2021 said that Hamas receives funding, weapons, and training from Iran, as well as some funds that are raised in Gulf Arab countries.

The group also receives donations from some Palestinians, other expatriates and its own charity organizations, it said.

In April, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant suggested that Iran provides Hamas with some $US100 million annually.

What was Hamas' strategy in carrying out the attacks?

By undertaking such a devastating strike, the group's primary goal would have been to dramatically shake up the status quo, experts say: Israel maintains a tight siege on Gaza and continues to occupy the West Bank, and the goal of an independent Palestinian state is nowhere in sight.

One objective would be to put the Palestinian issue back on the regional and international agenda, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and director of its Program on Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs.

"People had moved on (from the Palestinian issue)," Elgindy told CNN.

"The new game in town is Saudi-Israel normalisation, and this new regional integration."

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month publicly acknowledged for the first time that negotiations were underway with Washington to possibly establish ties with Israel, saying normalization is getting "closer" every day.

Saudi-Israel normalisation could be a landmark moment for Israel's regional legitimacy as it might prompt other Muslim countries to follow suit.

Saudi Arabia had previously pledged not to recognize Israel until it grants independence to the Palestinians.

Elgindy said that, to some extent, Hamas has succeeded in its aim of bringing attention back to the Palestinian cause.

The group may also be trying to shatter any conceptions about its military capabilities, analysts say.

Hamas had delivered "a blow to Israel beyond what it is used to," and was also putting its capabilities on display, said Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs who focuses on Palestinian affairs.

Its shock tactics are a declaration that it "must be taken more seriously," Rahman said.

The Israeli military said Monday that Hamas had taken "dozens" of hostages and Hamas has said it has abducted more than 100 people.

The number of hostages taken, and the fact that many are civilians, shows that Hamas is looking for much more than a prisoner swap, the experts said.

In a previous kidnapping situation, Israel traded more than 1000 prisoners for one Israeli hostage.

The large number of hostages ensures that "this is not a short-lived military tit-for-tat that will die down and be forgotten," Rahman said, "but that it has longer-term political implications."

As part of its campaign against Israel, Hamas produced slick propaganda videos documenting its assault on Israel step-by-step. In some videos, its fighters wore bodycams to film the operations as they broke through Israeli fortifications and were seen dressed in commando-style uniforms.

That's key to the group's propaganda war, analysts say, which serves a number of objectives.

On the one hand, it is to "instil fear" among the Israeli public and imply that their leaders can't keep them safe, Elgindy said.

"That is going to come as a shock because Israelis take enormous pride in their military and their intelligence capabilities."

On the other hand, it is also for domestic Palestinian consumption.

Hamas has been long caught in a political war with the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and engages in security coordination with Israel.

This is meant to show Palestinians that "while over there, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president) … is basically asleep at the wheel, we are the true resistance, (and) are actually doing something," Elgindy told CNN of Hamas.

Can Hamas survive Israel's response?

Hamas' large-scale offensive shows that the group knows that the coming war may be an existential one, experts say.

Michael, of the INSS, speculates that Hamas may have been trying to provoke an all-out war with Israel, and may have been promised regional backing by its allies should it take place.

"Hamas… has had a very clear strategy which is based on the organizing rationale of a multi-front conflict," Michael told CNN, adding that Hamas sees Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Arab citizens of Israel who support Hamas, and southern Lebanon as potentially supporting its campaign.

A senior Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, over the weekend said the militant group was ready for the "worst-case scenario, including a ground invasion."

He said that the ground invasion would be "the best for us to decide the ending of this battle."

Israel-Hamas war: What you need to know

• Israel continues to pound Gaza with airstrikes, and thousands of rockets have rained down on Israel. More than 900 have been killed in Israel, and at least 600 in Gaza.
• A spokesman declares Hamas will execute Israeli hostages every time an airstrike hits civilian homes in Gaza. They state the surprise attack was launched after years of planning and preparations.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military is going on the offence against Hamas with a force "like never before". More than 300,000 reservists have been activated.
• Israel has declared a "complete siege" of Gaza, cutting off water, food and power supplies.

Anticipation was high before the Supernova music festival.

Thousands of excited festivalgoers didn't know where the trance party would be held until hours before, when organisers sent out a text message telling people the location: a place called Kibbutz Re'im, around 5km from the Gaza border.

Some 3000 people travelled out to the desert site in southern Israel, about two hours drive south from Tel Aviv, and the party began 10pm on Friday night.

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Revellers were still up and dancing at dawn the next morning.

At 6am, the sky was a crisp blue, broken only by a few wispy clouds.

It seemed perfect, but Supernova was on the brink of going down as the worst civilian massacre in Israel's history.

'They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction … Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms'

Soon, at least 260 people would be killed and an unknown number taken hostage. They now could face execution at the hands of Hamas militants.

As young Israelis danced to the music, sounds of gunshots and rockets began to blend in with the beats.

That initial confusion took a sinister turn as an air raid signal blared, a sound that all Israelis recognise as the signal for incoming rockets.

A voice came over a loud speaker set up on the festival site.

"Guys, we have red alert," the voice warned. "Red alert."

Festivalgoer Ortel told Israel's Channel 12 how the idyllic morning quickly transformed into a bloody ambush, as Hamas militants stormed across the border in an attack described as Israel's 9/11 or Pearl Harbour moment.

"They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction," Ortel said.

"Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms.

"They fired bursts, and we reached a point where everyone stopped their vehicles and started running. I went into a tree, a bush … and they just started spraying people.

"I saw masses of wounded people thrown around."

Before the festival, people were told not to bring firearms or knives. They were now trapped, without any defence, in an area offering few hiding places.

Hundreds of attendees ran across the plains of the Negev Desert, trying to escape Hamas gunmen who pursued and hunted them down in vehicles.

"We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field — the worst place you could possibly be in that situation," said Arik Nani, a resident from Tel Aviv.

Many of the militants, who arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, were wearing body armour and brandished AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

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Videos posted to the social media site Telegram showed armed men plunging into the panicked crowd, mowing down fleeing revellers with bursts of automatic fire.

Many victims were shot in the back as they ran.

"There was a traffic jam of cars trying to escape," festivalgoer Eliav Klein told NBC.

"Everyone just started running in all directions. Nobody knew where to go," he said.

"My friend had to jump off a cliff that was 25 feet high as he was running away from terrorists to save his life."

He said another friend witnessed victims on their knees at gunpoint. It's believed Hamas is now holding more than 100 Israelis as hostages.

Millet Ben Haim also made a frantic escape.

"I took the car keys from a friend of mine that was really wasted and got as many people in the car as possible and started driving like crazy," she told The Washington Post.

"The people who stayed, most of them got kidnapped or murdered."

Gili Yoskovich told the BBC how said she hid under a tree in a pomelo orchard, playing dead for three hours to dodge the gunfire and killings.

"They were going tree by tree and shooting. I saw people were dying all around. I was very quiet. I didn't cry, I didn't do anything."

"I was … breathing, saying: 'OK, I'm going to die. It's OK, just breathe, just close your eyes.'"

READ MORE: Shocking dashcam shows festival attendees shot point-blank

Maya Alper hid for hours, buried in a bush, "breathing and praying in every way I knew possible".

She lay frozen, until she finally heard people approaching, speaking in Hebrew.

Israeli tanks and IDF soldiers had arrived.

Drone footage of the scene taken after the attack showed chaotic lines of cars where drivers had attempted to flee.

Some burned-out vehicles were flipped onto their sides.

Others had bullet holes visible in shattered windows.

But the horror has not stopped.

Countless families have been left in a ghoulish limbo, with their loved ones missing.

Some are recognising their relatives, alive in unknown locations, in clips now circulating online.

The footage is harrowing; their torment indescribable.

In one video, an Israeli woman and her boyfriend – now identified as Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or – were shown being kidnapped.

In it, a distraught Argamani was hoisted onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away as Or was apprehended and made to walk with his hands behind his back.

READ MORE: Hamas threatens to execute Israeli hostages in Gaza

Argamani's father, Yaakov Argamani, yesterday shared through tears that he was praying for his daughter's safe return.

He explained that he was told about the video of his daughter, 25, while he was desperately searching for her inside an Israeli hospital.

"I went to one of the offices and was informed that she was not injured. While on the phone, her roommate contacted us, and said that there was a video of her on a motorcycle and she was kidnapped and taken to Gaza," he told Times of Israel.

"I had hoped that he was wrong, that it was not true, and then in the emergency room, a guy approached me and told me there was a video if I wanted to see her."

"I asked to see and then I saw that it was definitely her. She was so scared, so frightened. I always protected her, and at this very moment I couldn't."

Shani Louk, a German citizen, has also been identified in a video from the Gaza Strip.

Ricarda Louk, Shani's mother, spoke briefly about the devastating realisation that her daughter's capture by Hamas militants had been recorded on video.

"I was able to definitely identify our daughter, unconscious, as Palestinians were driving her to Gaza," she said.

"It looks very bad, but I still have hope.

"I hope that they don't take bodies for negotiations. I hope that she's still alive somewhere.

"We don't have anything else to hope for, so I try to believe."

The fate of the hostages now looks even more desperate, as Hamas today threatened to kill hostages if airstrikes hit homes in Gaza without warning.

"We declare that we will respond to any targeting of our people who are safe in their homes without warning, with the execution of our civilian hostages, and we will broadcast it with audio and video," spokesman Abu Obaida said in a statement.

With agencies

Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith will have to come up with almost $1 million to pursue his defamation appeal against news publications over reports he engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Federal Court ruled in June that articles published by Nine newspapers and The Canberra Times alleging Roberts-Smith's involvement in murders of four unarmed prisoners while deployed in Afghanistan were substantially true.

He has not been criminally charged and has since appealed the decision to the full court.

READ MORE: How a music festival turned into Israel's worst civilian massacre

On Thursday and Friday, Justice Nye Perram made orders after agreement between Roberts-Smith and the media companies that the decorated soldier should pay $910,000.

The money will be paid in three instalments and will act as security for the media companies, to be handed over if Roberts-Smith loses the appeal.

It will sit in an interest-bearing account selected by the court until the legal challenge is either accepted or dismissed after a 10-day appeal hearing scheduled for February.

The money comes on top of an estimated $25 million legal bill for Roberts-Smith and the news firms during a bitterly fought defamation case that involved over 100 days of hearings.

The newspapers are currently pursuing their costs against the former soldier as well as the Seven Network and billionaire Kerry Stokes' private firm Australian Capital Equity, which financially backed the war veteran in his lawsuit.

The Office of the Special Investigator and Australian Federal Police are jointly investigating 33 alleged offences by defence force members in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

The OSI was established after an inquiry by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force into soldiers' conduct in Afghanistan.

If you are a current or former ADF member, or a relative, and need counselling or support, you can contact the Defence All-Hours Support Line on 1800 628 036 or Open Arms on 1800 011 046.

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