Fauda's new season to include Israel-Hamas war, creator reveals

Fauda star and singer Idan Amedi was badly injured in Gaza earlier this month, where he was serving in a combat unit, and is reportedly recovering,

Avi Issacharoff, who co-created the hit series Fauda with Lior Raz, said that the show’s writers would have to rethink their entire plan for season five, according to a report in The Jewish Chronicle.

Issacharoff spoke last week with Josh Glancy of the Sunday Times at St. Johns Wood Synagogue in London (in an event hosted by the Tel Aviv University Trust) when he talked about the need to change the plot of the series, which deals with an Israeli counterterrorism unit, in the wake of the October 7 massacre and hostage-taking by Hamas and the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

The Israel-Hamas war cannot be ignored in Fauda’s new season

Fauda star and singer Idan Amedi was badly injured in Gaza earlier this month, where he was serving in a combat unit, and is reportedly recovering, as his songs have climbed back onto the charts.

Matan Meir, a crew member on the series, was killed while fighting in the north of Gaza in November when he was wounded in a booby-trapped tunnel.

“Some people will be able to ignore it [the war] but we can’t, we will have to write the war in, in some way,” said Issacharoff.

The focus of the show in previous seasons

The third season of the thriller series involved the unit going into Gaza to rescue hostages and showed one of the terrorists taking revenge in Israel later on.  Initially, Issacharoff said, they thought of telling the story of a much bigger hostage-taking and terrorist incident but abandoned it, thinking it was too far-fetched. Now, he said, it was time to rethink that decision.

Actors and filming crew members work on the set of Israeli television series ”Fauda” in Tel Aviv, Israel May 30, 2019. (credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)

Actors and filming crew members work on the set of Israeli television series ”Fauda” in Tel Aviv, Israel May 30, 2019. (credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)

Fauda started out concentrating on Israel’s fight against Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and later moved its focus to Gaza in the third season and to Europe in the fourth.

Created and aired in Israel by Yes, Fauda was different from many other series dealing with similar issues because it told its story from the Palestinian as well as the Israeli point of view.

Although some in the Arab world criticized it, it became a hit in many Arab countries when it was released by Netflix, including in Lebanon (where it made Netflix’s top 10).

Issacharoff, a journalist who teamed up with Raz to create Fauda in 2015, also talked about how he had spent time in Gaza and had seen the “empire of tunnels” firsthand.

The Jewish Chronicle also quoted him as saying, “Part of the problem is the Israeli government, the prime minister is not willing to discuss the day after. So we don’t really know what’s going on . . . Netanyahu knows that he will go to an election and he will lose, so he’s doing everything he can to avoid that.”

The fourth season of Fauda aired a year ago, and there is no date yet for the fifth season.