Experts continue to weigh in on the possibilities created by this week’s serendipitous killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
My friend Matt Duss, a longtime Middle East expert and former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, took to the NYT to argue that “Yahya Sinwar’s Death Can End This War.” Alas, the conditions he sets for doing so do not make me hopeful.
While Mr. Sinwar was far from alone in resisting an agreement — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly and openly undermined cease-fire efforts for months — his death can and must create new momentum to end this catastrophic and steadily widening war.
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A majority of Hamas’s senior leadership now resides outside of Gaza, mostly in Doha, Qatar, making it potentially easier to strike a deal. But for such a deal to be durable, it would need to really end the war, not simply start a new chapter of an Israeli military presence in Gaza.
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. The United States and its partners have a window to halt the downward spiral to regional conflagration. 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 and urgently take other steps to ensure that Gazans have adequate shelter, supplies and security as winter approaches.
All of that will require fresh diplomatic pressure on both sides, including a willingness for the Biden administration to withhold offensive arms to Israel if it does not cooperate. The United States should simultaneously renew its abandoned push for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon that allows civilians to safely return to their homes on both sides of the border. In furtherance of those aims, the Biden administration should also urge Israel to refrain from potentially escalatory strikes on Iran.
While this would indeed be a peaceful resolution, there’s simply no way Netanyahu will stop pressing his advantage in Lebanon or forego retaliating for Iran’s missile strikes on Israel. And, while the Biden administration has threatened to cut off arms to Israel, they’re surely not going to do so before next month’s election.
Atlantic staff writer Shane Harris, a longtime national security reporter, argues, “Two People Will Decide What Comes of Sinwar’s Death.”
In what turned out to be the last few months of Yahya Sinwar’s life, U.S. and Israeli officials worried that the architect of the October 7 attacks might never free the hostages they believed he had hidden in the twisting tunnels of Gaza. Sinwar had essentially abandoned negotiations over a durable cease-fire and the accompanying release of the 100-plus captives, as well as fresh aid for Palestinians and the chance to rebuild their obliterated territory with international help. American and Israeli intelligence officials, who had no direct contact with Sinwar and communicated via intermediaries, told me they weren’t sure if they were dealing with a rational actor ready to end his people’s suffering or a fanatic with a death wish.
Sinwar’s chance encounter on Wednesday with an Israeli military patrol, whose soldiers did not immediately realize that they had killed their country’s most wanted man, has inspired a cautious optimism. These are early days, but the “chief impediment” to freeing the hostages and bringing some peace to Gaza is gone, one U.S. official told me. Whether any of this happens hinges on the decisions of two men: Sinwar’s yet unnamed replacement and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Since October 7, Israeli society has debated a question of priorities: defeating Hamas and bringing the hostages home. Putting aside how one defines defeat, Netanyahu has always set the goals in that order. Much of Israeli society, and probably most of the hostages’ families, thinks they should be reversed.
That fundamental tension that has divided the country will not be resolved by Sinwar’s elimination. But his death, more than any other event in the course of the war, may force Netanyahu to put the hostages first. Certainly that is the Biden administration’s hope—and one that the families fervently share.
Tragic though the plight of the hostages is, it would be absurd for their release to be the chief strategic aim of the Israeli government. Destroying Hamas may be a chimeric goal but it’s the only one that assures the safety of Israel’s citizens. A reconstituted Hamas would simply take more hostages any time it feels like it.
Also at The Atlantic, pro-Palestinian activist Hussein Ibish contends, “Sinwar’s Death Changes Nothing.”
The killing on Thursday of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the principal architect of the October 7 attack on southern Israel, offers a golden opportunity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare victory and begin pulling troops out of Gaza. But that is not going to happen. Most likely, nothing will change, because neither Netanyahu nor Hamas wants it to.
Netanyahu’s calculation is no mystery. Should he leave political office, he faces a criminal-corruption trial and a probable inquiry into the security meltdown on October 7. He has apparently concluded that the best way to stay out of prison is to stay in power, and the best way to stay in power is to keep the war going—specifically, the war in Gaza. The battle against Hezbollah in Lebanon is too volatile, and involves too many other actors, including the United States, Iran, and Gulf Arab countries, for Israel to keep control of its trajectory. For this reason, Lebanon is much less useful than Gaza as a domestic political tool.
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Hamas, for its part, seems to think it can hold out in the short term, and gain in the long term. An insurgency requires little sophistication by way of organizational structure or weaponry—only automatic rifles, crude IEDs, and fighters who are prepared to die. Years, possibly a decade or longer, of battles against Israeli occupation forces for control of Palestinian land in Gaza are intended to elevate the Hamas Islamists over the secular-nationalist Fatah party as the nation’s bloodied standard-bearer. Hamas leaders may well see no reason to abandon this path to political power just because Sinwar is dead.
This has been my position as well. Wars end when one or both sides conclude they can not enhance their position by further fighting. It’s not at all clear that Sinwar’s death creates that condition.
While I have no doubt that his political career is a significant factor in Netanyahu’s decisionmaking, I do not believe it’s the driving factor in the war policy. By all indications, all of the major Israeli parties want to continue the war. Given that they think they’re winning, it’s hard to blame them.
