Strikes on Gaza have gone up despite Sinwar’s death

The US, UK, German and French leaders have said last week's death of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar could be "an opportunity" to end the Gaza war since they had argued he was the only or the main obstacle to a ceasefire. This is a lie. Hamas accepted the Gaza ceasefire plan on May 6th while Hamas politburo chief Ismail Hanieh was in charge. Sinwar, who was head of Hamas' Gaza administration, was consulted and did not object. After US President Joe Biden endorsed the plan and circulated a belated Security Council resolution calling for implementation, Hamas has gone along despite Israel's assassination of Hanieh on July 31st and Sinwar's assumption of his job in August.

Sinwar’s death during a chance encounter with new recruits on patrol in Gaza’s southern Rafah province rather than by a dramatic high profile Israeli intelligence operation must be galling for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He had counted on public celebration of a “victory” over Hamas.

He has been the chief obstacle to a ceasefire. He has done everything he could to scupper plans put forward since last November. The US backed Netanyahu's rejectionism by vetoing UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions until May 31st when President Joe Biden latched onto the existing three-phase ceasefire plan and submitted his own resolution to the Council.

Now that Israel’s alleged arch enemy Sinwar is dead, Netanyahu has again rejected ending the war and escalated air attacks on northern Gaza. To complement military pressure, Israel has also denied food, water, and medicine and blockaded three hospitals in the area. Netanyahu's objective is to secure the evacuation of 400,000 Palestinians from Jabalia, Beit Hannoun and Beit Lahia. Residents have refused to leave because Israeli troops fire on families on the road to the south and Israel’s designated "safe zone" at al-Mawasi on the coast is not safe from Israeli strikes.

On the ceasefire plan, Netanyahu has imposed conditions unacceptable not only to Hamas but to the Palestinians as a whole. He demands the right of Israeli military intervention in Gaza whenever it likes and permanent control of the Netzarim Corridor which bisects Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow buffer zone on the Gaza-Egypt border. The latter demand is also rejected by Cairo which argues this would violate Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel and the agreement on the deployment in the corridor of Egyptian police reached when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Hamas calls for full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and has said it would leave power and hand over to a Palestinian national government which would govern both Gaza and the West Bank. Arab Gulf countries have proposed a pan-Arab force to restore law and order in Gaza after Israeli withdrawal but are not prepared for this force to act as Israel’s subcontractor. Hamas could accept the Arab force as it could lead to reconstruction.

Netanyahu has not announced a plan for post-war Gaza, but he is under pressure from expansionist settler groups and members of his own Likud bloc to recolonise northern Gaza once Palestinians are forced to leave.

After Sinwar's death, his Gaza deputy Khalil Hayya announced that Hamas will continue to resist Israeli occupation. This has been the case with the demise of every top Hamas leader since the movement's founding at the start of the First Intifada in December 1987. Veteran Hamas politician Khaled Mishaal has stepped in as overall interim politburo chief. He previously assumed this role in July and served until Sinwar took over following Israel's murder of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel has had a complicated relationship with Hamas since it emerged in Gaza. As Fatah was the instigator and driver of the uprising, Israel tried to undermine Fatah by aiding Hamas. A Palestinian human rights activist based in Gaza who was jailed by Israel early in 1988 said he found no Hamas activists had been imprisoned while he was incarcerated. A Palestinian journalist in occupied East Jerusalem said Fatah leaflets calling for peaceful resistance were confiscated but not Hamas leaflets.

However, after winning the 1992 Israeli election on a peace platform, Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin deported 415 Palestinian activists from Gaza and the West Bank for more than a year to a hillside in Lebanon. Most were leading figures from Hamas. Following the adoption of the Fatah-negotiated Oslo Accords in September 1993, Hamas assumed a low-key posture and waited to see what would happen. Oslo generated hope among Palestinians that Israel was prepared to pull out of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem and allow the emergence by 1999 of a Palestinian mini state in 22 per cent of the country.

Once hopes were dashed, the Second Intifada, the rising of the gun and bomb, erupted in 2000. Both Fatah and Hamas took up arms. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded by re-invading the West Bank in 2002 and assassinating Hamas' co-founders Shaikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2004. When in 2005 the Second Intifada wound down, Sharon withdrew Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza and focused on expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank. In 2007, Hamas overcame an attempted coup by Fatah and seized power in Gaza. Nevertheless, Netanyahu – who served as prime minister between 2009-2021 and has been in office since December 2022 until now – continued to see restive Fatah as Israel's main antagonist and allowed funds to flow into Gaza for Hamas.

Despite Hamas' home-made rockets occasionally striking Israel, Netanyahu was lulled into believing Hamas was not a serious threat until October 7th last year when its fighters crossed the Gaza-Israel border, killed 1,139 and kidnapped 251. While this event traumatised Israelis, Netanyahu postponed blame for ignoring Hamas by waging all-out war on Gaza, repressing Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and bombing and occupying Lebanon. Once his war ends, Netanyahu will have to pay a high price for failing to anticipate Hamas' raid and face his trial in a Jerusalem court for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. This is why the elimination of Sinwar makes no difference to Netanyahu.