The death of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader and mastermind of the 7 October attacks, is a significant milestone in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The 61-year-old, who took over after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in August, reportedly “met his end in a chance encounter with an Israeli patrol in southern Gaza”, on 16 October, said the BBC.
Killing Sinwar was “a major goal for Israel, which marked him for death soon after the 7 October attacks” and has sparked some hope for an end to the ongoing conflict.
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In a video statement, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it’s the beginning of the end.” He described Sinwar’s death as an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas”, but warned that the war “is not over yet”.
Many Israelis are “sensing a window of opportunity to bring back the hostages still held in Gaza – and they are making their voices heard”, said CNN. Large crowds of protesters gathered in cities across Israel over the weekend, demanding that Netanyahu and his government “make the return of the hostages their top priority”, which many believe “has not been the case so far”.
The Israeli prime minister has “long been trying to balance the demands of his far-right coalition partners”, who are “dead-set” on refusing any deal with Hamas, with “increasingly loud calls” from Israel’s Western allies, including the US, who are “pressuring him to strike an agreement and bring the war in Gaza to an end”.
Now is the moment to “direct all of the effort” to getting the hostages back home, said Haaretz in an editorial. There is “nothing more justified” than demands from the hostages’ families that Israel use this military achievement to agree an “immediate” deal. “Sinwar’s killing requires a genuine examination of the possibility of concluding the war on every front and beginning the reconstruction that Israel so badly needs. That must be the aim.”
Not everyone shares the same optimism. “I don’t believe the death of Sinwar changes Israel’s calculations in terms of Netanyahu’s desire to proceed with the destruction and depopulation of the Gaza Strip,” Omar Rahman, from the Middle East Council on Global Affairs think tank, told Al Jazeera. Killing Sinwar “further degrades Hamas from a leadership and operational standpoint”, he said, but the militia fighters habitually “operate in cells without centralised leadership”.
“The death of Sinwar alone is not the sufficient condition to end this Gaza war and put Israelis and Palestinians on a pathway to a better future,” said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. Netanyahu’s government will need to make tough decisions, including whether to negotiate and potentially involve a reformed Palestinian Authority in rebuilding Gaza. “To put it bluntly, can Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel live up to his Churchillian self-image and go along with something that he has previously rejected?”
What next?
Until now, “both sides have made a ceasefire conditional on demands the other refused to consider”, said Tortoise. Yet while the war continues, there “are reasons to believe that Israel’s hand is now stronger and that Hamas pragmatists may accept proposals Sinwar would never have contemplated”.
A ceasefire and hostage release deal would also “create a slim opening for de-escalation in the wider region”. But any deal with Hamas, “however favourable”, will be challenged by Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition partners, “and the next election in which he might end his dependence on them is not until 2026”.
