What Will Yahya Sinwar’s Death Mean for Gaza? Not Peace.

The Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor

12:18 JST, October 21, 2024

After the death of Yahya Sinwar, a raft of political leaders expressed hope for a turning of the page. Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was seen as the architect of the shocking Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which preceded a year of devastating war that pulverized the Gaza Strip and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. With Sinwar slain, Israel could claim its biggest scalp of the campaign so far – and, some hoped, consider an end to the hostilities.

Sinwar was a potent symbol. Over the course of the past year, he evaded Israeli capture or assassination while moving through Hamas redoubts in Gaza. His shadow deepened as a coterie of fellow leaders in Hamas, as well as top officials in Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant organization allied with Iran, were systematically targeted and killed by Israel. Sinwar’s demise, for Israelis in particular, marked necessary retribution for the horrors of Oct. 7.

Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris cheered his killing, saying the world was a better place with Sinwar gone. Biden cast the militant leader as “an insurmountable obstacle” in diplomatic negotiations over a cease-fire – though many analysts and U.S. and Arab officials have said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been just as much of an obstacle to a deal. Harris declared at a Wisconsin campaign event after Sinwar’s death that “it is time for the day after to begin,” calling for the expediting of talks to end hostilities and free the remaining hostages in Hamas captivity.

“There seems to be a consensus that this is a bridge to something. The question is: What is that something?” Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and public opinion expert, told the Guardian. “There’s a sense this needs to be leveraged quickly, and among the more dovish commentators, that means a hostage deal.”

There is no indication that a truce is imminent. Israel has stepped up its deadly bombardments of Gaza. Vital aid barely trickles into the enclave. Israel continues to bomb alleged Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. In both places, civilian casualties are soaring and calls for a cease-fire go unheeded.

Netanyahu stressed that the military campaign had more to achieve after Sinwar’s killing. Meanwhile, some of his far-right allies hailed the episode as evidence that there is a military solution to terrorism – no matter what generations of counterinsurgency scholars may suggest. If past is prologue, such confidence may prove foolhardy.

In an interview with Politico, veteran former U.S. diplomat Ryan Crocker cited the impact of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when Israeli forces crossed the border in an extended operation to dislodge the Palestine Liberation Organization that operated there. The war was tactically successful – the PLO was expelled from Lebanon – but left a disastrous legacy, including the infamous massacres carried out by Israel-allied Lebanese militias in Palestinian refugee camps, and set in motion the emergence of Hezbollah.

“One thing I’ve learned over years, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the concept of the defeat of an adversary only has meaning in the mind of that adversary,” Crocker said. “If that adversary feels defeated, he is defeated. If he doesn’t, he’s not. Will these decapitations make the adversary feel defeated? I guess time will tell but I would bet against it.”

Other regional experts concur. “This is a central failing of Israel’s security doctrine,” noted the Middle East Institute’s Khaled Elgindy in a webinar last week. “There’s a tendency to see threats as finite.” The country’s political and security establishment focus on destroying enemy cadres, weapons caches and materiel. But, Elgindy said, “what Israelis chronically overlooked is the motivation.” For Palestinians, that’s rooted in a history of “suffering, occupation, denial of rights,” he added, which have spiraled into “the massive generational trauma of the past year.”

It’s not clear who will replace Sinwar from Hamas’s depleted ranks. What is clearer is that the militant organization in Gaza has been operating in a decentralized manner for quite some time, adopting guerrilla tactics that Israel will struggle to stamp out absent a political deal or an even more ruthless military campaign that would empty whole swaths of Gaza and inflict significant civilian harm. Many analysts and aid workers believe the latter may already be underway in northern Gaza.

“Sinwar’s death is definitely a tactical success for Israel and brings much-needed comfort to those who lost loved ones on October 7,” Merissa Khurma, director of the Middle East program at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, told me. “However, without a clear Israeli definition of victory or what the end game looks like in Gaza, it only inspires Hamas to continue fighting and certainly in the long term to recruit.”

The question of an end game or “day after” scenario has tailed Netanyahu for months. The Israeli prime minister has clashed with U.S. officials and domestic rivals over his unwillingness to countenance the steps required to forge a meaningful peace. A clutch of Arab monarchies may be willing to deepen ties with Israel and invest in Gaza’s reconstruction, but they want to see Israel take seriously the need for a “two-state” solution to end the occupation of Palestinian territories – something Netanyahu has spent a career resisting.

Netanyahu “knows that the foundation of such a plan … is an Israeli willingness to engage in negotiations leading in the future to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas wrote. “No one in the world, apart from Netanyahu, will settle for anything less. The fact is, he is no partner to such a plan, even if he deceives and manipulates the U.S. that he’s willing to consider it.”

Indeed, the bulk of Netanyahu’s political coalition would also reject it. Numerous lawmakers from his Likud party are involved in a major upcoming far-right rally on Gaza’s borders championing calls for the territory’s de facto ethnic cleansing and subsequent Jewish settlement. Gadi Eisenkot, a prominent Netanyahu opponent who briefly served in his wartime cabinet, decried such gestures, saying they threatened to “shatter the broad national consensus around this just war.”

U.S. critics of Israel’s conduct of the war want to see the Biden administration wield its considerable leverage over Israel to compel a cease-fire. “If Mr. Sinwar truly was the obstacle to a cease-fire agreement that U.S. officials – including President Biden – have claimed, that obstacle is now gone,” wrote Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “The Biden administration must press the Netanyahu government and remaining Hamas officials to end the war in Gaza, return hostages to their families, surge humanitarian aid into the territory.”

The Biden administration recently dispatched a letter to Israel, implicitly threatening a suspension in military aid within 30 days if it didn’t reverse the “deteriorating” humanitarian situation in Gaza. Finally, peace advocates argued, U.S. officials appear to be willing to enforce their own nation’s laws when it comes to the disbursement of military assistance to Israel. But, for the sake of political expediency, the Biden administration has timed any potential suspension to take place after the U.S. election.

“The 30-day period the letter lays out for Israel’s corrective measures is time Gaza does not have,” noted the International Crisis Group in a policy brief. “Winter is quickly approaching, and it has been impossible during the conflict for residents and humanitarian workers to make adequate preparations, especially construction of temporary shelters.”