This weekend marks 1,000 days since the Hamas-led October 7 massacre that claimed 1,164 lives and saw 251 people taken hostage.

No complete legal reckoning for that day's events has occurred in court yet, yet a dedicated statute passed, more than NIS 1 billion received approval, and construction started at Atarot in northern Jerusalem to house a specialized military tribunal.

Building forms only part of a broader effort whose core difficulty lies in bringing hundreds of defendants to justice for offenses committed at dozens of sites.

All of this must proceed amid an expanding body of evidence, a potentially huge group of witnesses, sensitive materials, security measures, and a legal setup with limited local precedents.

The central issue remains how the state can try October 7 perpetrators without overburdening the judiciary, neglecting victims and their relatives, or failing under the weight of criminal process demands.

Initial proceedings are unlikely to start soon. The Jerusalem Post has learned that current projections place the opening of trials no earlier than 2028.

Put simply, the assignment involves erecting a temporary judicial apparatus around an offense that defies reduction to one dossier, individual, site, or legal concept.

A structure - not yet proceedings

The Knesset passed the October 7 prosecution statute in May, establishing a special military court in Jerusalem for these matters.

The statute addresses alleged actions from October 7 through October 10, 2023, along with offenses against hostages held in Gaza afterward.

It permits charges under standard criminal laws and additional categories such as crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder, rape, abduction, and looting.

The tribunal may also apply the death penalty in appropriate instances under its available rules.

Panels of three judges will preside, with at least one member required to be a military court president or a senior district judge integrated into the military system.

While ordinary verdicts allow appeals, any death sentence automatically triggers review by a panel led by a retired Supreme Court justice regardless of whether the defendant appeals.

The statute accounts for the fact that these cases differ from typical terrorism matters.

Tailored tribunal

Thus the court must offer sufficient security for hundreds of high-risk defendants, capacity for simultaneous hearings, support for extensive digital records, and provisions for victims and families revisiting the events of October 7.

The Post has learned that the planned Atarot facility will feature nine courtrooms and accommodate as many as 15 judicial panels.

A distinct division within the military court system will handle dedicated judicial, prosecutorial, administrative, security, technological, and victim-support roles.

On June 18, Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman announced that bulldozers had begun site preparation at Atarot, marking the first public indication that the statute had moved into execution.

Atarot lies near the Kalandiya crossing and the West Bank. Rothman noted the site choice partly addressed defense counsel access and prison transport needs.

The Post understands that three main tracks now advance together: physical construction of the complex, development of a victim-and-witness framework, and finalization plus handover of case files from the State Attorney's Office to the military prosecution.

From probe to military prosecution

The State Attorney's Office responded to an inquiry by stating it formed a specialized team in October 2023, headed by its Southern District prosecution unit and strengthened by prosecutors from additional districts.

The group has followed investigations of scenes, suspects, victims, and events while drafting legal opinions and documents needed for future cases.

In February, after talks led by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara with chief prosecutor Amit Aisman and the military advocate-general, officials decided the military prosecution would manage the matters through completion before the special court.

The Post understands that complete files have not yet transferred to the military prosecution. Still, a team focused on the special tribunal began work in February, ahead of final legislation.

Since then the team has mapped personnel, infrastructure, procedural, and institutional requirements for the project.

The government approved the funding framework in early June, allocating over NIS 1 billion for 2026 through 2029.

These resources cover the court complex, prosecution offices, an IDF headquarters site, staffing, secure transport, communications and broadcasting systems, medical services, and further operational expenses.

The hostage situation significantly affected case timing. While Israelis remained captive in Gaza, the state delayed indictments over fears that suspects might feature in a future exchange deal.

The State Comptroller's Office June report faulted the absence of any October 7-related trial to date, while acknowledging that this concern had slowed progress.

Which narrative will prosecutors seek to establish?

The first indictments will count not only for the individuals named but also for the story they present.

Maurice Hirsch, a former military prosecutor in the West Bank, told the Post that one of the prosecution's earliest and weightiest choices will involve the legal doctrine or doctrines selected.

This decision will portray October 7 not merely as isolated crimes at specific places but as a coordinated criminal operation by individuals acting jointly toward a common unlawful goal.

If prosecutors adopt a locality-based approach, responsibility would rest mainly on proof tied to a particular kibbutz, road, residence, or festival ground.

Under the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine, however, prosecutors could argue that participants in the wider operation share liability beyond the exact spot of their capture or the single act they personally performed.

The initial doctrine choice or choices could shape the entire course of proceedings.

Hirsch observed that public information strongly suggests coordination through the assault's scale, simultaneous border breaches, weapons, maps, preparations, and documents reportedly recovered in Gaza.

Whether evidence meets the criminal standard for applying the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine remains a separate matter. The prosecution has not signaled its preferred direction.

That selection will influence the number of indictments, evidence shared, witnesses summoned, judges and prosecutors required, and whether families must recount the same events across multiple courtrooms.

Locality-based cases may prove easier to manage and allow clearer links to specific victims and proof, Hirsch noted.

Yet they could generate numerous separate proceedings, whereas a broader case might better illustrate the attack's coordinated plan but would require evidence connecting people, planning, and actions across multiple scenes.

The evidence challenge

Prosecutors must convert an unusually large and diverse collection of material into admissible court evidence: physical items from the scenes, suspect statements, survivor and witness accounts, perpetrator-recorded footage, digital records, and materials gathered during military operations in Gaza.

The main difficulty lies less in the material's existence than in organizing it, deciding what qualifies for use, sharing it with defense counsel, and connecting it to specific defendants and charges.

Conversely, many victims were killed, which creates its own complications.

The Post understands that the planned victim-and-witness system anticipates around 12,000 potential witnesses.

The military prosecution must ready itself for involvement as indictments and court arrangements develop.

Particularly difficult is the handling of sexual violence cases. Many victims died, and some scenes suffered damage or alteration amid the attack's disorder.

Surviving witnesses may have observed only portions of an event. They could face questions about incidents that resist reconstruction through a standard single-victim, single-scene evidence model, quite apart from the effects of trauma on recall.

In its May report, the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children advocated a cumulative evidence model for sexual and gender-based offenses.

This model would draw on preserved footage, cross-referenced testimony, repeated patterns across locations, forensic findings, and additional records.

Such an approach may apply to eventual prosecutions, especially where victims perished, scenes were compromised, and surviving witnesses can describe only fragments of what they observed.

Prosecutors must still prove evidence against particular defendants and specific charges. Even so, the report maintained that individual incidents can be evaluated within the broader criminal context of the attack.

The same tension appears with classified material. Hirsch pointed out that prosecutors may encounter disputes over evidence too sensitive for open court.

This can spawn litigation inside the main case: arguments over whether material can be revealed, summarized, shielded, or used without compromising an intelligence source or method.

A trial built to endure

After 1,000 days, the impulse is to judge the project by visible steps such as a statute, funding, or construction site.

Yet the true test will be whether the system delivers proceedings that are credible and lasting.

Hirsch warned plainly that haste has limits. "If anyone thinks that these trials are going to finish quickly, they are simply deluding themselves," he said.

A criminal prosecution of this magnitude requires time. The defense must receive and review evidence, preliminary motions must be addressed, prosecutors must determine what they can establish, and judges must resolve contested legal and evidentiary issues.

Each defendant retains the right to an individual defense, even when the alleged crimes rank among Israel's worst, Hirsch emphasized.

He fears it could take one to two years before any trial reaches the stage where a defendant testifies, simply to file indictments, transfer evidence, and complete preliminary phases.

Hirsch added that Knesset discussions on judicial appointments to the tribunal for terms of three, five, or seven years were not minor details, since duration could determine whether cases stay coherent from beginning to end.

References to the Eichmann trial that have appeared in public discussion are understandable yet limited in value.

Adolf Eichmann was a single defendant tried in one proceeding. Here the court expects to manage hundreds of defendants, varying degrees of alleged participation, and crimes spread across many locations.

The nearest parallels may be the international tribunals formed after Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, though those were bodies created after the events and imposed from outside.

Israel aims to address these cases through its own judicial system, blending existing criminal law with the new October 7 framework.