Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar’s assassination marks the end of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, opens the possibility of ending the Iranian-led axis, and creates new options to free the remaining 101 hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday night.
“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza. This is the beginning of the day after Hamas,” Netanyahu stated shortly after the IDF confirmed it had successfully killed Sinwar.
In an appeal to Palestinians in the Strip, he said, “This is an opportunity for you, the residents of Gaza, to finally break free from its tyranny.”
The dramatic announcement first by the IDF and then by Israeli leaders appeared to mark the symbolic end of Hamas’s rule in Gaza, slightly more than a year after the terror group’s invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The attack has sparked a year-long military campaign to destroy Hamas, during which Israel ignored major American and international objections to its war on Hamas.
Sinwar who led Hamas in Gaza since 2017 and was the mastermind of the October 7 attack, had in the last weeks been viewed as the major obstacle to the completion of a hostage and ceasefire deal.
A message to Hamas
Netanyahu in his public statement Thursday which he released on video made a direct appeal to the Hamas captors and terrorists.
“Your leaders are fleeing and they will be eliminated.”
Those who lay down their “weapon and return our hostages” would be allowed to “leave and live,” Netanyahu said. His words hinted at a plan that would allow those captors to be exiled in exchange for the release of the hostages.
Netanyahu also issued a stern warning to the captors: “Whoever harms our hostages – their blood on his head. We will settle accounts with him.
“The return of our hostages is an opportunity to achieve all our goals and it brings the end of the war closer,” Netanyahu stated.
To the families of the hostages, who had been held for over a year, he said, “This is an important moment in the war. We will continue to work with all our powers to bring home all your loved ones, who are our loved ones.
“This is our highest commitment. This is my highest commitment,” Netanyahu stated.
Sinwar’s killing came just weeks after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. It has also killed the head of the Hamas al-Qassam military brigade Mohammed Def and senior Hezbollah commander senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil. Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was also assassinated in Tehran, but Israel has not formally taken responsibility for that assassination.
Netanyahu, however, hinted that it had, in fact, killed him, when on Thursday he included Haniyeh on the list of people the IDF had killed, such as Nasrallah, Def, and Aqil.
To the people of the region in Gaza and in Beirut, Netanyahu said that the darkness was receding in light of all these deaths.
“We have a great opportunity to halt the [Iranian-led] axis of evil and to create a different future,” Netanyahu said. This will be a “future of peace, a future of prosperity for the entire region,” he said.
Netanyahu pointed out that Sinwar’s assassination in Rafah had proved the wisdom of the IDF’s military campaign in Gaza, particularly its insistence that the IDF must be able to operate in that region of the Gaza Strip.
“Now it is clear to everyone, in Israel and in the world why we insisted on not ending the war, why we insisted in the face of all the pressures to enter Rafah, the fortified stronghold of Hamas where Sinwar and many of the murderers hid,” he said.
Sinwar he said had committed the “most terrible massacre in the history of our nation since the Holocaust, the mass murderer who murdered thousands of Israelis and kidnapped hundreds of our citizens.
“Today, as we promised to do, we came to account with him,” Netanyahu stated.
“Now it is clear to everyone, in Israel and in the world why we insisted on not ending the war” and “why we insisted in the face of all pressures against it to enter Rafah, the fortified stronghold of Hamas where Sinwar and many of the murderers hid,” Netanyahu said.
To the people of Israel, however, he cautioned that Israel’s war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies was “is not over yet” and there are “still difficult days ahead,” but in the end, “we will win.”