His unexpected death will once again shake up the fate of the region, leaving Hamas leaderless, Gaza without any governance, and Israel able to claim that it has finally achieved key war objectives, but at a huge cost in lives. All this increases the likelihood of a previous ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. If this happens, even if the war in Lebanon rages on, the possibility of Israeli retaliation against Iranian missile attacks is high, and the path to de-escalation in the entire region will remain narrow.
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Mr. Sinwar, 61, spent years planning the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas militants breached the Gaza border, catching Israel off guard, killing nearly 1,200 people and seizing 250 more. hostage. He has been in hiding ever since, lurking in a maze of underground tunnels, communicating with his men through handwritten notes and creeds and avoiding traceable cellphones. He spent much of last year hiding in squalor and darkness, seeming to control events as well as world leaders from their plush offices. Examine Israeli hostages; negotiate with the CIA through agents; and direct military attacks.
He was at the top of the IDF’s list of targets as their armored divisions tore up coastal strips and bombed them with aircraft. What caught him in the end was not powerful force or high-tech intelligence, but an accidental encounter. According to preliminary reports, he was with two other men near Rafah at night. An IDF foot patrol accompanied by a tank discovered him and died in the ensuing fire. Patrols did not search for him, and his body was not identified until the next day when a drone surveyed the half-ruined building where he had taken refuge.
Mr Sinwar believes his attacks on Israel will mark the beginning of the end for the Jewish state. He has been an enforcer for Hamas since the movement’s founding in the 1980s, spending 23 years in an Israeli prison after being sentenced for the murder of four Palestinians accused of colluding with Israel. He was released in a prisoner exchange in 2011 and began planning the Oct. 7 attack when he returned to Gaza, according to Israeli intelligence. Documents captured by Israel show that he was in contact with Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, hoping to coordinate a multi-front attack on Israel. However, while Hamas achieved its immediate goal on October 7, overwhelming an IDF base on the Gaza border and massacring Israelis, Hezbollah could only fire short-range rockets. The Israel Defense Forces sent additional reinforcements to the Lebanese border and evacuated nearby civilians. Then it invaded Gaza.
Israeli intelligence services are of two minds about Mr. Sinwar’s legacy. Some believe he made a fatal mistake, arguing that the IDF was too risk-averse to send soldiers into Gaza. “Shinwar thinks he understands Israeli society and that it has become weak,” one analyst said. Others believe he is motivated by fanaticism. “A senior IDF officer who has spent years studying the Sinwar documents said. Either way, the aftermath of his attack was not a victory even by his brutal standards. Israel put Hamas’s military might It was reduced to a shell, though in the process, Gaza was reduced to ruins, killing more than 40,000 people and sparking global outrage. The IDF also beheaded Hezbollah’s leadership. It has launched missile strikes, most recently on October 1, but Israel has re-established military deterrence by striking Iranian proxies in the region and may retaliate directly against Iran through airstrikes in the coming days.
Three huge questions now loom. One is what happened to Hamas. Its leadership vacuum could see its remaining control of Gaza disappear. Israel has now eliminated the hardline troika that controlled the group – Mr Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa – as well as at least half of the movement’s senior leadership in Gaza. In addition to being Gaza’s boss since 2017, Sinwar has been the movement’s overall leader for the past three months, replacing Ismail, the movement’s political bureau chief who was assassinated by Israel in Tehran on July 31. Ismail Haniyeh.
Hamas, which still has thousands of fighters in Gaza, is now in what the IDF calls “guerrilla mode” and has lost most of its commanders. , but more importantly some Israeli analysts expect some Gazans to oppose Hamas, whose “external” leadership comes mainly from Qatar, Turkey and Lebanon. The surviving senior figure in the wing and Mr Sinwar’s rival, former Politburo chief Khaled Meshal, is likely to take over. He is a more pragmatic figure who has been opposed to ties with Iran, which have intensified under Haniyeh and Sinwar.
This leads to the second question: whether the conditions for the current ceasefire in Gaza are appropriate. Hamas’s remnants may try to use the remaining 101 hostages, about half of whom are dead, to strike a deal to trigger a ceasefire that would allow it to retain control of the strip, or its leaders to ensure safe passage from it. In a statement announcing Sinwar’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the prospect with those holding the hostages. “Those who lay down their weapons, we will allow them to leave and live.” The Israeli government has contacted mediators who have been handling ceasefire talks.
Mr. Sinwar demanded a full and permanent withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza as a condition for such an agreement. Despite pleas from security chiefs, Netanyahu remains staunchly opposed to the move. Now, if Hamas is indeed prepared to lower its demands, he may be motivated to accept a deal that the Biden administration has also been urging him to reach. Mr. Netanyahu, whose approval ratings plummeted after the Oct. 7 attacks, may have thought he could make another comeback in his long and seemingly improbable career. Apart from the religious extremists within its cabinet, Israel has little interest in assuming responsibility for Gaza, let alone rebuilding it. If some alternative governing body takes over nominal responsibilities after a ceasefire, it’s at least possible that the future of the strip won’t be one of permanent poverty and anarchy or eventual annexation.
A final question is whether the prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages will lead to a broader de-escalation in the region. Iran’s leaders may now hope so, at least for the time being. While they and their proxies, including Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis, claim to be fighting Israel out of sympathy for the Palestinians, they are also participants in a parallel struggle between the Israeli and Iranian regimes. Still, their interest in pursuing this fight may be waning after the damage suffered by Hamas and Hezbollah. Mr. Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah have both been killed by Israel. There may be more pain to come. On October 17, the United States bombed Houthi positions in Yemen, while Iran awaited Israeli retaliation for its missile strikes: Israel is most likely to target military targets after the United States objected to Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities .
Does Israel believe it can safely stop the fighting? Mr Sinwar succeeded in delivering the worst blow to the Jewish state in its history. But Israel has now come a long way toward rebuilding military deterrence—albeit at a huge reputational cost outside the Middle East and a huge human cost in Gaza. The long war between Israel and Iran is not over yet, nor is the tragedy of the stateless Palestinians. But a way out is still possible: targeted Israeli retaliation against Iran; ceasefire negotiations in Gaza and de-escalation in Lebanon. Mr. Sinwar was reluctant to hear the news, but his death provides Israel with an exit ramp that might lead to an end to the war.
© 2024, The Economist Newspapers Limited. From The Economist, published with permission. Original content can be found at www.economist.com