Israel claims to have killed in Gaza Hamas leader Yahia Sinwarthe man most wanted by the Government and considered the mastermind of the attacks of October 7, 2023. His death has been confirmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a previously recorded appearance on Thursday afternoon after he was also the Foreign Ministers, Israel Katz, and the Defense Ministers, Yoav Gallant, were presumed dead. Sinwar’s death occurred on Wednesday during a tank attack on a building where the army located Hamas members in Rafah, in the south of the Strip.
“Today we have settled accounts. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task is not yet completed,” Netanyahu said, hinting that there is war ahead. The prime minister’s public appearance shows the extent to which Sinwar’s death is a political success for him. The president has addressed the families of the hundred hostages who remain kidnapped. “We will continue with all our strength until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home,” he added.
After killing three Hamas members and recovering the bodies, Israeli troops checked to see if it was Sinwar, according to official army radio. This media adds that they carried out DNA checks with the available samples, since Sinwar spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons. He had replaced Ismail Haniya only a month and a half ago, murdered in Tehran on July 31, at the head of the so-called Islamic Resistance Movement, which has governed Gaza for almost two decades.
In parallel, Israel maintains an intense offensive in the extreme north of the Strip. There, the bombing of a school that provided shelter to evacuees during the war in the Yabalia refugee camp has killed at least 19 people, including women and minors, according to local health sources. The army, as on previous occasions, claims to have hit a Hamas command center where “dozens of terrorists” were located. Shortly after confirming Sinwar’s death, the army announced the death this Wednesday in southern Lebanon of five soldiers from the Golani Brigade, the same one that lost four of its members on Sunday due to the impact of a Hezbollah drone near from Haifa.
Netanyahu has obtained a valuable piece with the head of Hamas with which to shore up his contested military operation in the Strip. Capturing him dead or alive was one of their priorities. “Yahia Sinwar has ended his life being beaten, chased, fleeing for his life, not being in charge of his organization and only taking care of himself. “This is a clear message to all our enemies,” the Minister of Defense said in a statement. This death represents “a clear message to all the families of the fallen, to all the families of the hostages: we are doing everything possible to harm those who harmed their loved ones and free those kidnapped and return them to their families,” has added.
“This is a good day for Israel, for the United States and for the world,” commented US President Joe Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris has noted that Sinwar “was responsible for the killing of thousands of people, including the victims of October 7 and the hostages killed in Gaza. “My hands were stained with American blood.” The Democratic presidential candidate also sees an opportunity to “finally end the war” in the Strip.
The families of the captives rushed to applaud the death of the Palestinian leader, even before there was official confirmation, according to a statement from the forum that brings them together. “We call on the Israeli Government, world leaders and mediating countries to take advantage of the military achievement to turn it into a diplomatic one and seek an immediate agreement for the release of the 101 hostages: the living for rehabilitation and the murdered for a proper burial. ”, adds the text.
In just over two months, Israel has destroyed the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah twice. On July 31, he assassinated Haniya, top leader of the Palestinian movement, in Tehran when he had attended the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masud Pezeshkian. The Israeli army later killed Nasrallah, the head of the Shiite militia party, in a bombing raid on the Dahiye neighborhood, the group’s stronghold, in Beirut. Shortly afterwards, in an attack from the air in that same suburb, the man who was almost certainly going to become his successor, Hashem Safieddine, fell.
Sinwar had almost always been located under the protection of the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels built over decades by Hamas and which are also used to hold hostages. He was widely searched around Khan Yunis, his town, in the south of a territory where more than 42,000 people have died in the last year from Israeli attacks. But he finally died on land, in a building in Rafah, at the southern end of the Strip and next to the Gaza border with Egypt, a town taken over by occupation troops since last May. The head of Hamas was accused of being mainly responsible for the massacre in Israel of some 1,200 people and the kidnapping of another 250 that on October 7, 2023 launched the current war.
Before the official confirmation, the army and the secret services had announced in a statement that they were checking whether one of the three bodies found was that of Sinwar. “During the army’s operations in the Gaza Strip, three terrorists were eliminated. The Israel Defense Forces and secret services are verifying the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahia Sinwar. At the moment, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” the statement said. “In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area. The forces operating in the area continue to operate with the required precaution,” he added.
This reference to the captives is not trivial, since the controversy pursues the Government and the army while Netanyahu imposes his warlike vision of the conflict on the families of the kidnapped, who insist that he give priority to their release before focusing on liquidating the militia. Throughout this year of conflict, an unknown number of hostages have died in attacks by their own troops, some due to serious errors by the deployed military. Until now, before his death, one of the speculations about why it took so long to kill the Hamas leader, despite the enormous efforts invested, is that he could be surrounded by a group of captives to try to reduce the possibilities. of being a victim of a bombing. If the circumstances of the operation in Rafah are confirmed, this was not the case.
“No tunnel is too deep.”
“No tunnel is too deep, Sinwar. Ask Nasrallah,” warned last week the pamphlets launched over the Strip with warnings in Arabic towards the head of Hamas, whom they assured that the same fate awaited him as the head of Hezbollah. Hasan Nasrallah, assassinated on September 28 during a bombing over Beirut. In recent weeks, some details of how Sinwar was trying to evade surveillance and monitoring by the Jewish State had been leaked. He avoided electronic devices and communicated with handwritten notes that he sometimes sent to his recipients through especially trusted close people.
One of those letters, which would even serve to organize the conditions of negotiation with Israel for a possible ceasefire, even reached Nasrallah shortly before he died, as Hezbollah showed on social networks last month. In it, the Palestinian expressed his gratitude for the support during the war as part of the axis of which they are part under the leadership of Tehran. A similar note appeared on the profiles of the Houthi guerrillas in Yemen after the leader of Hamas congratulated them after managing to deliver one of their missiles to Israeli territory.
On Israel’s list of most wanted enemies, other top officials of Hezbollah and Hamas have died in the 12 months of fighting. One of the most notorious murders was that of Mohamed Deifhead of Hamas’s armed wing (the Ezedin al-Qassam Brigades), on July 13 in southern Gaza, although the Jewish state did not confirm his death – Hamas maintains that he is still alive – until August 1. Israel had tried to kill Deif on numerous occasions, who along with Sinwar was considered an essential pillar in the preparation of the October 7 attacks.
