Yahya Sinwar killed, what will happen to Israel and Hamas?

October 21 two Hamas sources told the media that the idea of appointing a leader will lead to success Yahya Sinwar, a murder on October 16 has been ruled out, at least for now.

Hamas’ leadership, operating at arm’s length from the Gaza Strip in the Gulf state of Qatar, has decided that the organization will be run, at least until March 2025, by a five-member committee created in August after the assassination of political leader Ismail Haniyeh. .

The committee, based in Doha, the capital of Qatar, includes Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashal, Zaher Jabareen, Mohammed Darwish and the Politburo secretary, whose identity remains anonymous for security reasons.

The internal dynamics of Hamas have certainly been greatly shaken, but an informed source with intimate knowledge of its inner workings has made an interesting point.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Sadeq Abu Amer, head of the Turkish think tank Palestine Dialogue Group, believed that the removal of Sinwar, whom he called “one of the most prominent hawks in the movement,” would likely lead to “the advancement of a trend or direction that could describe as dove-like (dove-like).”

Yahya Sinwar, former leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, meets with members of Palestinian factions at the Hamas presidential office in Gaza City, April 13, 2022. (Photo: ATTIA MUHAMMED/FLASH90)

He noted that after Sinwar was out of the picture, the hostage-prisoner exchange deal became a practical policy.

Abu Amer was quick to dismiss any suggestion that Sinwar’s brother Mohammed, if still alive, could replace him as Hamas leader. “Mohammed Sinwar is the head of the battlefield,” he said, “but he will not be Sinwar’s successor as head of the political bureau.”

Although this turned out to be somewhat of a misnomer, he believed that Hamas’s Qatar-based political leaders might decide to elect one of their members to head the organization. He named two leaders – al-Hayya and Mashaal.

Al-Hayya, 63, was Sinwar’s deputy and led the Hamas delegation to negotiate the ceasefire.

In an April 2024 interview, al-Hayya said that Hamas was willing to negotiate a truce with Israel for at least five years and that if an independent Palestinian state was created along the 1967 borders, the group would dissolve its military wing and become a purely political party.

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Mashaal, 68, was the group’s political leader from 1996 to 2017.

He was assassinated in 1997 and now supports forces opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the 13-year civil war that still rages in Syria.

Consequently, he is not on good terms with Iran, or with Hezbollah. He has good relations with Turkey and Qatar.

Jabareen, once sentenced to 35 years in prison for the deaths of two Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount, was freed in a prisoner exchange.

He led the resumption of suicide bombings in Israel in 2023. Darwish, also known as Abu Omar Hassan, has been chairman of the Hamas Shura Council since October 2023.

THE INITIAL reaction to the news of Sinwar’s death on October 16 reflected hope in many quarters that a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the return of the hostages were just steps away.

Such immediate expectations seemed to quickly dissipate. The first public statement after Sinwar’s death, made by his deputy in Qatar, al-Hayya, was that there would be no release of the hostages without “a cessation of aggression… and the withdrawal of troops from the Gaza Strip.”

Subtle answer

Israel’s position immediately after Sinwar’s death was ambiguous. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first reaction was that the war was not over. “Evil has suffered a heavy blow,” he said, “but the task before us is not yet complete.”

However, in a message published in the media, Netanyahu offered Hamas terrorists free exit from the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of hostages. Anyone who lays down their arms and returns the hostages will be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu said.

Could this formula become the basis for a final deal to return the hostages? Perhaps—provided that the new Hamas leadership committee, based in Qatar, is indeed more pragmatic (more dovish, as Abu Amer put it) than its former hawkish leader.

A reassessment of Hamas’s situation and prospects may convince the leadership that moving the organization outside the Gaza Strip may be the most effective way to recover and rebuild.

Given the enormous manpower losses that Hamas has already suffered, it is certainly preferable to continue the fight inside the Gaza Strip to the last man.

This scenario, if realized, will not meet the aspirations of US President Joe Biden, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and many other Western leaders who so freely offer advice on how Israel should proceed . act.

The generally accepted international view was that Israel should de-escalate on all fronts, negotiate a hostage exchange in the Gaza Strip involving an Israeli ceasefire, cease attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut and the rest of Lebanon, and respond only minimally to Iran’s massive actions. A rocket launches into Israel on October 1.

As it turns out, Israel’s response, while far from minimal, was essentially targeted.

Netanyahu’s policy of slowly but surely eliminating the leadership of the Iran-backed terrorist armies in Gaza, Lebanon and the rest of the axis of evil, while depleting their personnel and wearing them down, is clearly working.

No chance of success

Continued Western support for unenforceable ceasefires, peace agreements and de-escalation would never succeed.

Against jihadist enemies bent on its destruction, any such appeasement on the part of Israel would only serve to ensure the continuation of a multi-pronged existential threat.

However, in a strictly limited area of the Gaza war, Sinwar’s removal may have offered a glimmer of hope. Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar reportedly visited Cairo on October 20 to discuss a possible resumption of hostage deal negotiations.

Two days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel, where he reiterated his view that Israel should try to take advantage of the Sinwar killing and continue negotiations on the hostage deal. Netanyahu reportedly agreed.

Blinken traveled to Egypt, where the future governance and reconstruction of Gaza was reportedly discussed, which would include the creation of an international force to oversee the process.

According to an Oct. 19 report in The Wall Street Journal, Sinwar told Hamas negotiators in Qatar that if he was killed, Israel would make concessions.

In this, as in nothing else, he apparently was not mistaken. On October 21, Israeli TV Channel 12 said that Israel had recently made it clear to the United States that it was ready to make concessions that were previously considered impossible.

There was no mention of what such concessions might include, but they could be based on Netanyahu’s free passage offer.

If the report is true, their success may depend on how flexible Hamas’s renewed leadership can become in the post-Sinwar era.

The author of the article is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.