From the time he emerged on the scene in Gaza in the 1980s until the time of his death at the hands of the Israeli military in the Rafah neighborhood of Tal Al Sultan on Thursday morning, Yahya Sinwar’s life has been defined by war and direct confrontation with Israel. Now his killing, like his life, will have a lasting impact on the fate of Israeli hostages, the region, and the Islamist militant group he once led.
Shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s self-defined goals were to destroy Hamas organizationally, deny Gaza the ability to constitute a threat to Israel and return the nearly 200 hostages captured in the brazen Hamas attack.
Israel’s military statement surrounding Sinwar’s death raises questions about how much Israel knows about the hostages and their whereabouts.
With his killing, Israel has inched closer to one of its stated objectives at least — to diminish Hamas’ governance of Gaza while destroying the organization’s military wing and ability to attack Israel. But these objectives should be viewed in both the short and long term.To understand the short-term impact of his killing, it’s important to understand who Sinwar was.
Sinwar was not just a political figure within a militant organization; he was viewed as a hard-liner even by some members of the group that the U.S., Europe and Israel have deemed a terrorist organization. He was also one of the few leaders who enjoyed the credibility of Hamas’ military wing because he once operated as Hamas’ counterintelligence chief, effectively making him responsible for weeding out Palestinian collaborators who worked with Israel.
While other Hamas leaders were sometimes seen as detached for living in exile, Sinwar operated and led Hamas from inside the besieged Gaza Strip.
In that capacity, Sinwar was a ruthless operator and tactician. His time previously spent in Israeli jail serving life sentences for the killing of Israeli soldiers earned him broad support within Palestinian militant factions. When he was released in a prisoner swap deal for a captured Israeli soldier, his reputation was solidified and his ascent within Hamas was all but certain.
Sinwar bided his time while orchestrating the Oct. 7 attacks.
With Sinwar’s killing, Israel has dealt a significant blow operationally to the organization, at least in the short term. Israel had previously killed Mohammed Deif, the leader of the Al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. In his absence, Sinwar had been the main interlocutor and chief architect of the negotiations to release Israeli hostages while conducting battlefield operations against Israeli soldiers inside Gaza.
So what happens to the hostages now? For the past year, Israeli intelligence officials had assessed that Sinwar was hiding in Gaza’s underground system of tunnels and that he had barricaded himself with the remaining Israeli hostages. The hostages served as a guarantor and shield preventing Israel from launching any operation to kill Sinwar or rescue the hostages because it risked endangering all of them. As a result, Sinwar remained elusive. But with his death, that narrative has faltered. Sinwar was not killed in a tunnel, and there were no indications he was hiding among the hostages, or near them.Instead, the Israeli military broadcast images of Sinwar aboveground in the rubble of a building, dressed in what appears to be military clothing, suggesting that Sinwar was operating on the battlefield and not in hiding. Israel’s statement about Sinwar’s death raises questions about how much Israel knows about the hostages and their whereabouts. That will likely increase pressure on the prime minister to offer a clear plan on how he will get the hostages home.
Which brings us to the lasting, long-term impact of Sinwar’s death on the region and Hamas. Israel has had a long history of successfully killing Palestinian leaders, including several Hamas leaders who preceded Sinwar. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Abdel Aziz el Rantisi. Most recently, Ismail Haniyeh. And yet with each killing of a Hamas leader over the years, their life story of armed resistance becomes folklore that fuels another generation of leaders who are in some cases more extreme, more hard-line and more militant.
Does Sinwar’s death mean the end of Hamas? No. Does it reduce Hamas’ immediate threat to Israel? Yes. Does it mean the end of the war and withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, where more than 40,000 people have already been killed? Unlikely. Does it mean the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestinians and the establishment of a Palestinian state? Definitely not.
So while today is a tactical success for Israel, the core of the conflict remains the same. As do the driving forces that will continue to shape the region for some time to come.
