Fauda producer confirms new season to feature Israel-Hamas war

The co-producer of the popular Israeli series ‘Fauda’, Avi Issacharoff, has confirmed that the upcoming fifth season will feature the ongoing Hamas war against Israel.

“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,” Issacharoff said during an event in London last week, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

Fauda, meaning ‘chaos’ in Arabic, was launched in 2015 and quickly became an international success among viewers in the West, the Middle East and beyond. The series features an undercover Israeli counter-terrorism unit, led by the character Doron Kabilio, and played by the co-producer Lior Raz.

With much of the dialogue in Arabic, and told from the perspectives of both sides of the conflict, Fauda has been praised for its high level of realism that mirrors Israel’s real battles against terrorist threats in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and other regional players.

The third season focused on the kidnapping of two young Israelis who were forcefully brought as hostages to Hamas-led Gaza, and Israel’s dramatic counter-terrorism efforts to rescue them and bring them home.

Issacharoff admitted that for the upcoming fifth season, he and Raz had initially been working on a large-scale hostage-taking terror plot but eventually dismissed it as unrealistic. Following the Oct. 7 massacres and kidnapping of around 240 Israelis and foreign nationals by the Hamas terror organization, the Fauda creators were reportedly forced to reconsider the direction of the new season.

The Fauda series is painfully linked to the real ongoing war between Iranian proxies and Israel. In early January, Fauda actor, Idan Amedi, was seriously injured while serving as a reservist combat soldier in the Gaza Strip. Amedi is currently recovering from his injuries. He previously urged the Israeli people to end the political infighting that preceded the Oct. 7 massacres.

“I join my brother reservists in calling on the politicians, all the media outlets and everyone: Whoever doesn’t have something good to say, simply shut your mouths. The People of Israel live,” Amadi said.

In November, Matan Meir, a Fauda crew member, was killed after sustaining life-threatening injuries in a booby-trapped tunnel in the northern part of Gaza.

Issacharoff can relate to the Israeli soldiers’ ongoing challenge in fighting Hamas terrorists. With a background in investigative journalism, he described his first-hand experience of the “empire of tunnels” below the Gaza Strip.

The fourth Fauda season was released in 2023, and quickly became an international hit in many countries, including Lebanon, where part of the story takes place, due to the focus on the Iranian-backed, Shiite terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

There is no available information as to when the new fifth season will become available to the international audience on Netflix.