Qatar, Doha:
Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has dealt a major blow to the Palestinian group, leaving a gaping hole at the top of the movement, but the militants remain determined to fight.
Sinwar masterminded the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war, and took over as leader of Hamas in August after the death of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh.
While Israel has hailed Sinwar’s killing as a major victory, analysts say Hamas could use his legacy to mobilize a new generation of militants who grew up suffering from the fallout from Israel’s retaliatory war. It is said that there is a sex.
Let’s see what Hamas does next.
How bad a blow?
Hamas official Khalil al-Haya confirmed Sinwar’s death in a video statement on Friday, saying Hamas was mourning the death of a “great leader.”
Andreas Krieg, a Middle East analyst at King’s College London, said Sinwar’s murder was not only “a highly symbolic event” but also created “a leadership vacuum in this highly networked organization”. said.
His death came just over two months after the death of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran.
Hamas and Iran have blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death, but Israel has not commented.
Krieg said there were differences between Hamas’s political leadership, which is mainly in exile in Qatar, and its military and operations wing in Gaza.
Israel also announced in July that it had killed Hamas military commander Mohamed Deif in Gaza, a charge Hamas denies.
“The various groups within Hamas will continue to fight, but there will be a vacuum at the core of the movement that will make coordination very difficult,” Krieg said.
James Dorsey, director of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, said Mr Sinwar was an “exceptional” figure in Hamas, who had “widespread support from both political and military wings within the movement”.
Who will replace Shinwar?
After the death of his predecessor, Mr. Sinwar emerged from a pool of candidates for Hamas leadership, including relatively moderates based outside Gaza, such as Musa Abu Marzuk, an adviser and negotiator said to be close to Mr. Haniya. did.
Mr. Dorsey is close to Mr. Sinwar and other exiled Hamas figures, such as the Qatar-based Mr. Haya, who was the lead negotiator in the failed Gaza ceasefire and hostage exchange negotiations, are again top contenders. He said it was possible.
He said other exiled leaders who could take his place include Khalid Meshaal, who served as Hamas’s chief until he was succeeded by Haniyeh in 2017.
Sinwar’s election in August as a leader rather than a member of the political wing was widely seen as a reorganization of the movement around an armed struggle focused on the war in Gaza.
“The next leader will inevitably be someone at the operational level,” Krieg said.
If leadership is to be handed over to someone on the battlefield, Sinwar’s younger brother, Mohammed Sinwar, has emerged as the favorite.
Krieg said his brother “doesn’t have Yahya’s charismatic leadership appeal. But he does have a good reputation as a fighter and combatant.”
Can Hamas bounce back?
In a defiant statement on Friday, Mr. Haiya said Mr. Sinwar’s death would strengthen the movement, adding that his killing made him one of the “leaders and symbols of the ancestral movement.”
Krieg said that despite Hamas’s “tactical and operational defeat” in killing its leader, Sinwar’s death “will not change the armed resistance against Israel in Gaza.”
Dorsey said Hamas is a movement that “in principle has proven to be very resilient.”
“The history of Hamas…is a history of Israeli assassinations of its leaders. Yahya Sinwar joins that list,” he added.
Dorsey said the slain leader’s legacy will “obviously” be tied to the legacy of the Oct. 7 attacks.
But whether the war sparked by this attack continues to increase Hamas’s power has as much to do with the level of desperation in Gaza as it does with Shinwar.
“This is a generation that has lost all hope… certainly in Gaza. If you have no hope, you have nothing, you have nowhere to go, you have nothing to lose,” Dorsey said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
