In Israel, Sinwar’s death is met with joy and renewed hope for hostages

The Israeli military said Thursday it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the commander of the group’s ongoing battles in Gaza and one of the world’s most wanted men.

His death, which the army said was confirmed by DNA analysis, marked a major milestone in Israel’s year-long campaign to crush Hamas while also raising critical questions about the direction of the conflict and the future of the war-ravaged enclave.

“He who carried out the most horrific massacre in our history since the Holocaust, the arch-terrorist who killed thousands of Israelis and kidnapped hundreds of our citizens, was today eliminated by our heroic soldiers,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country in a prime time address.

Though Israeli officials had believed for months that Sinwar was hiding in the militant group’s expansive network of tunnels, probably surrounded by hostages, he was killed above ground Wednesday, alongside two other Hamas operatives, in a firefight near the southern city of Rafah. After a year of relentless hunting, the Israeli military found him by chance, officials said.

News of his death spread at the end of the first day of Sukkot — the Jewish holiday that was interrupted by the Hamas rampage just over a year ago — leading to celebrations across Israel.

Beachgoers in Tel Aviv erupted in cheers. Families of soldiers killed in Gaza posted videos of themselves dancing with pictures of their lost relatives. Flag-waving celebrants filled a traffic circle in Carmel. Relatives of hostages, meanwhile, used the occasion to beseech the government once more to reach a cease-fire agreement in Gaza and allow their loved ones to come home.

Some Israeli leaders didn’t wait for the DNA analysis to express grim satisfaction.

“‘You will pursue your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword,’” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted on X hours before the official confirmation, quoting a passage from Leviticus. He included pictures of two other top militants Israel has killed in recent months - Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif - both marked with red X’s, with a blank spot between them reserved for Sinwar.

Confirmation of the Hamas leader’s death came after his body was transported to Israel and tested against genetic records collected during his more than two decades in Israeli prisons.

“This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Thursday. National security adviser Jake Sullivan hailed the operation as an example of U.S.-Israeli security cooperation: “It was with American intelligence help that many of these leaders, including Sinwar, were hunted and tracked, flushed out of their hiding places and put on the run,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said the event was a major milestone in Israel’s fight in Gaza, and could change the dynamics around cease-fire talks and military strategy. Sinwar’s death - and the graphic pictures of his body that flooded social media - would provide Israel with a crucial “victory image,” he said.

“It would have been very difficult to declare an end to the war with Sinwar still in Gaza running Hamas,” Plesner said. “No one thinks Hamas is going to vanish. But this could bring the war on the southern front, if not to an end, at least much closer to an end.”

In Gaza, where Israel’s war has led to a humanitarian collapse, there were also expressions of relief and, more discreetly, of pleasure.

“Many citizens are happy about his death,” a resident of Gaza who has been displaced multiple times told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by the militant group. “They believe he played a significant role in the destruction in Gaza.”

Najwa Awaja, 39, a mother of two children, said that she had not wished for Sinwar to be killed but that “what matters to me, and to everyone here in Gaza, is for the war to end.”

Yet those hopes appeared premature. “The war, my dear ones, has not yet ended,” Netanyahu said toward the end of his remarks Thursday night, a sentiment shared by others across the political spectrum. Benny Gantz, a rival of Netanyahu who left the war cabinet in protest of his leadership earlier this year, posted on X that the “IDF will continue to operate in the Gaza Strip for years to come” - signaling the longest war in Israel’s history was likely to grind on.

The Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, caught Israel off guard, traumatizing the country and sparking a war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people and leveled large parts of the Gaza Strip. Killing or capturing Sinwar has been a chief goal of that military campaign, one that Israelis often likened to the American yearning to bring Osama bin Laden to justice after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Yet the Hamas chief survived a year of devastating airstrikes and the deployment of tens of thousands of ground troops across the tiny enclave. Intelligence agencies said he lived chiefly in the tunnel network he ordered built throughout Gaza, typically near a shield of hostages. Israeli commanders thought they were closing in on him as early of February, and numerous times since then, only to have him elude their grasp.

In the end, he was killed not in a tightly scripted commando mission but in an unplanned fight that erupted Wednesday. The encounter happened because the army had stepped up activities in that part of southern Gaza, an Israeli security official said.

“This specific incident was a coincidence,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “But we were in the area because we had intelligence that senior Hamas leaders were in the area.”

Yaakov Amidror, a former major general and Israeli national security adviser, attributed the killing to “the fact that we were in every corner of the Gaza Strip, pushing on every attempt of Hamas to regroup and making him run from place to place.”

Sinwar was “likely moving between underground and aboveground spaces in an attempt to evade Israeli forces,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters Thursday.

The house he died in was in was booby-trapped and collapsed after being hit by an Israeli tank round, according to Amir Avivi, a former deputy IDF commander in Gaza: “When they went in the house they saw him.”

For the families of the 101 Israelis hostages still held in Gaza - only a few dozen of whom are still believed to be alive - the death of Sinwar was met with both joy and frustration. Since November of last year, when 105 captives were freed in a brief negotiated cease-fire, they have appealed in vain for an end to the fighting and the return of their relatives.

“We feel like justice has been served,” said Gal Dickmann, 31, whose cousin Carmel Gat was among six hostages killed by their Hamas captors last month. But “what we celebrate is not the elimination of our enemies,” Dickmann continued. “We celebrate life, and we will celebrate when the hostages come back home.”

The families have blamed, in differing measures, both Sinwar and Netanyahu for failing to reach a compromise. The Hamas leader’s death revived their hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough.

Families and advocates quickly gathered in downtown Tel Aviv on Thursday, hailing Sinwar’s death and chanting, “Make a deal now!”

“I think the war should have ended a long time ago, but let’s end the war now,” said Deborah Galili, 43.

“This is a milestone,” she added. “Let’s bring the hostages home now, let’s end the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israelis and hostage families. If Netanyahu wants some victory, he can point to this.”

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Balousha reported from Toronto and Parker from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. Lior Soroka and Alon Rom in Tel Aviv, Loveday Morris in Berlin, and Michael Birnbaum in Washington contributed to this report.

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