The news about the elimination of arch-terrorist and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last Thursday (he was actually killed the previous day) in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah caught everyone by surprise – apparently, even our intelligence forces, whose job it was to locate Sinwar’s exact hiding place in the last year, and who several times got as close as a hot cup of coffee.
It is undoubtedly a quirk of history that the army unit responsible for the joyous event – Brigade 828 – believed that they had brought down three anonymous terrorists whose movements were suspicious, and only after going through the rubble left behind by their activity were dumbfounded to discover a dead body gaping at them, which unmistakably resembled Sinwar.
What makes this story even more bizarre is that on December 15, 2023, exactly ten months earlier, the very same army unit accidentally killed three Israeli hostages who had escaped their Hamas captors from an apartment in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City and were mistakenly identified as Hamas terrorists. Only after their tragic deaths were the three identified as Israelis: two Jews and one Arab.
Be all this as it may, the news about Sinwar’s demise was received by the Jewish population of Israel with great joy, and quite justifiably so. Sinwar was directly responsible for the atrocities of October 7 last year, for Hamas’s refusal to surrender despite the massive destruction of large sections of the Gaza Strip, the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazan inhabitants, and the refusal to negotiate a feasible deal for the release of the remaining 101 hostages. In retrospect, one wonders why he wasn’t eliminated many years ago.
I must admit that one manifestation of Israeli joy disturbed me – the newly acquired practice of distributing Baklavas and other sweets to passersby – just as Arabs do after successful terrorist acts against us. Aren’t there any appropriate Jewish public manifestations of joy that could be practiced? I don’t mean opening a bottle of Arak on live television, as TV analyst Amit Segal did on Channel 12 when the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was announced at the end of September.
How can we leverage this situation?
The crucial question now is whether and how we can leverage Yahya Sinwar’s demise in order to bring back the hostages and end the war there on terms that are convenient to us. On the basis of statements coming from official quarters, we may conclude that the basic assumption in government circles is that today’s chances of bringing back the hostages are much better than they were last week, as are the chances for starting to bring some order into the administration of the Gaza Strip after the fighting ends.
On the other hand, there appears to be skepticism with regard to the offer made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his recorded statement last Thursday evening to the effect that those physically holding hostages in the Gaza Strip will be remunerated if they hand them over to us. The skepticism results from the assumption that those actually holding the hostages are ideologues rather than opportunists. Only the future will tell whether this is correct.
Of course, what transpires from now on depends on several factors. First of all, we do not know who will be selected to lead Hamas in the future. It is assumed that someone from among the surviving Hamas leadership apparatus in Qatar will be selected, though Sinwar’s younger brother, Muhammad, will apparently assume the leadership of the organization’s military activities. However, it is still unknown whether Hamas will now follow a more pragmatist approach or whether it will continue to pursue the harsh ideological line pursued by Sinwar.
Secondly, we do not know whether Iran and Qatar will continue to support Hamas financially and/or militarily to the extent that they have done so far.
A third factor is what policy Netanyahu will choose to pursue. Will he decide to take advantage of the new circumstances and, at long last, seek out a strategy designed to advance us towards a more stable situation that might not lead to permanent peace at this stage but will enable us to rehabilitate our society, economy, political and judicial systems, and international status?
To a large extent, Netanyahu’s approach to the situation in the last year was not only based on pragmatic considerations but also on his desire to preserve the stability of his all-right coalition and his own political career. Two factors might now affect Netanyahu’s policies and conduct in a less political direction. The first is that his coalition now commands the support of 68 MKs after Gideon Sa’ar and his National Right party joined the government on September 30, and thus somewhat weakens potential troublemakers in the coalition.
The second is a certain strengthening in Netanyahu’s popularity, the cause for which one can now add Sinwar’s elimination last week. As things look at the moment, the elections to the 26th Knesset will occur in their due timing, in October 2026, so for the time being, Netanyahu need not worry about the stability of his coalition and his own political survival.
Finally, how will all this affect Israel’s confrontation with Hezbollah? At the beginning of the current war and Hezbollah’s decision to join the fighting in support of Hamas in a measured manner, the basic assumption was that once a deal was reached with Hamas, there would also be a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Today, the confrontation with Hezbollah is viewed by Israel as a separate and independent problem, even though Hamas and Hezbollah are both Iranian proxies. Whether or not Sinwar’s death will directly affect Iran’s and Hezbollah’s current confrontations with Israel is yet to be seen, though it looks as if Israel, on its side, would rather separate these arenas.
However, when three UAVs were sent on Saturday morning by Hezbollah in the direction of Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, some commentators suggested that the act might be connected to Sinwar and perhaps also to Israel’s assassination of Nasrallah last month. Fortunately, only one UAV reached Caesarea, and the Netanyahu’s were not there. Nonetheless, it is an event worth reckoning with.
The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher and has published extensively both journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book, Israel’s Knesset Members: A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, was published by Routledge.