There was cautious celebration in Israel on Thursday as news started to filter through that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had been killed in Gaza. The mastermind of October 7 was — among some competition — the most fanatical leader in Hamas.
In 2011, he was the most high-level of 1,027 Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prisons in exchange for one kidnapped Israeli soldier.
His release caused huge controversy in Israel. Time would show why.
Once back in Gaza, he became notorious for his psychopathic violence — directed against Palestinians as well as Israelis. In 2016, he was involved in the torture and murder of Hamas’ own Mahmoud Ishtiwi, whom Sinwar accused of homosexuality.
He was always the fanatic’s fanatic. In 2018, he gave an address to the citizens of Gaza in which he said: “We’ll take down the border [with Israel] and tear out their hearts from their bodies.”
On October 7 last year, he made his words a reality.
For many Israelis, the killing of Sinwar was always the most important signal that the war against Hamas in Gaza could be over.
In the past year, the group’s ability to fire rockets into Israel had already been almost totally degraded. In the last 12 months of fighting, Hamas had already lost almost all of its senior commanders.
But as long as Sinwar lived, there could be no closure for the Israeli public.
There are several immediate questions that will be on people’s minds. For the past year, Sinwar has been believed to have surrounded himself in the tunnels of Gaza with some of the Israeli hostages stolen from their homes on 10/7. Are they still alive? And if so, where are they?
It is possible that Sinwar long ago lost track of which hostages were where, as Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups spread them around Gaza.
Or perhaps he did, as was long believed, keep what he would have seen as the most valuable hostages (women and children) close around him. He was reported to move around the tunnels of Gaza with these hostages and a permanent accompaniment of explosives so that if he died, they did too. But it seems, based on early reports, that this was not the case. He died with other Hamas terrorists above ground.
We know from written and verbal messages passed by Sinwar in the past year that he saw this battle as a civilizational one against the Jews.
And that he regarded any and all Palestinian civilian casualties of his war as “necessary sacrifices.”
His fanaticism may well have been one of the most important forces to have prevented an earlier end to the war and a deal to hand over the remaining hostages. Sinwar knew that he would not live if all the hostages were released.
The fate of the remaining hostages will hopefully become clearer in the coming days. Perhaps now that Hamas’ leadership is almost completely destroyed, there will be the kind of chaos that has broken out in Hezbollah since its leadership was also destroyed in recent weeks. The chaos could lead to further killing.
Or it could lead to people realizing that there is nothing now worth fighting for and that it is finally time for Hamas to bring this war to a close.
It is known that Sinwar was a major block to any discussion even of postwar planning or Gaza. He had let it be known in the tunnels that he thought it “shameful and outrageous” that some Palestinian factions were engaging in talks last December about postwar reconstruction.
So there is likely to be a sigh of relief across the moderate Arab countries as well as across Israel that this maniac has finally gone to the dust.
What it means in the short term is that an end to the war may finally be in sight. Israel’s prime minister has made it clear since last year that he is interested only in total victory against Hamas.
Many people said Benjamin Netanyahu would not be able to achieve that goal. It seems they are the ones being proved wrong.
In the longer term, it is possible that, with Sinwar gone, Israel and its regional and international partners will finally be able to imagine what a deradicalized, postwar Gaza might look like.
But it is too early to have that discussion before any surviving hostages are returned home. And not returned as bargaining chips, but as a prerequisite to the IDF halting its operations.
For now, there is a much wider lesson for the region and indeed for America.
Sinwar wished to annihilate the state of Israel. He took his best shot at it on October 7. Hassan Nasrallah also wished to annihilate the state of Israel. Both were also fanatical enemies of the West. Sinwar has the blood of many Americans as well as Israelis on his hands. Nasrallah also believed that he was free to murder and kidnap Americans — including 241 American Marines in Beirut.
Both have now been buried in the earth.
Will their fanatical, bloody and apocalyptic worldview die with them? It is possible. Observers often say that such fanatics are inevitably replaced by another fanatic. But Sinwar — like Nasrallah — was a fairly unique figure. Irreplaceable, you might say.
But will people in the region — as well as the West — who fell for their bloody propaganda now realize that their side is the losing one? It would be the best thing possible for peace in the region if they did. Figures like Nasrallah and Sinwar are not “saviors” of the Palestinian people.
They were always the worst menaces to the Palestinian people — ensuring by their actions that peace was not achievable and war would be the only end.
Sometime in the past year, Sinwar passed a message through the tunnels in which he said, “We have the Israelis right where we want them.”
He didn’t. But now the Israelis have Sinwar exactly in the place he deserves.