According to a Monday night report by the Wall Street Journal, while Qatari and Egyptian mediators were endeavoring to expedite ceasefire negotiations, Yahya Sinwar was ordering his subordinates in Hamas’s political leadership outside Gaza to reject any concessions. Sinwar spelled it out in a message, promising that significant civilian casualties would generate global pressure on Israel.
This was the time thousands of anti-government protesters crowded the streets two or three times a week, demanding Netanyahu cobble a hostage deal “now.” Right-wing pundits insisted there was no deal to cobble, that it was all a fiction produced by Hamas and the Israeli mainstream media – the latter grabbing at any opportunity to unseat the democratically-elected PM.
In March, Sinwar communicated with Hamas officials, ordering them once again to reject any hostage agreement. He asserted that Hamas held a favorable position in the negotiations, and referenced the internal political discord in Israel, fractures within Netanyahu’s wartime coalition (Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot resigned three months later), and increasing pressure from the United States to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“We have to move forward on the same path we started,” Sinwar wrote his underlings abroad.
In August, Sinwar assumed the position of overall leader of Hamas, a role he had effectively occupied since October 7. He promptly directed the organization toward a more aggressive ideological stance.
In early September, IDF forces discovered the bodies of six murdered hostages, one of them American-born, in a tunnel located in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. The IDF reported the recovery of DNA evidence belonging to Sinwar in an underground chamber that contained a television and a sofa. The conclusion was that, as IDF soldiers were getting close, Sinwar ordered the killing of his Israeli human shields and fled for his life.
But this was proof that he was somewhere in Tel al-Sultan, and the search for him was narrowed.
Jerusalem merayakan tereliminasinya Yahya Sinwar oleh IDF.
Perayaan oleh masyarakat yang beradab, bebas dari cengkraman teroris. pic.twitter.com/e9XEToHWjZ pic.twitter.com/wssy9eVPwV— Vi Tu (@vianratulangi) October 17, 2024
Following the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Sinwar communicated with Hamas’s political leadership located overseas, indicating that the terrorist organization would encounter increased pressure to reach a compromise regarding a hostage agreement; however, he advised against doing so.
This coincided with increased protests in the streets of Tel Aviv and elsewhere, which included clashes with the police and eventually an attempt to burn a police officer alive.
At that juncture, confined in Tel al-Sultan with no escape route available due to the IDF’s destruction of the tunnels facilitating his movement between Rafah and Khan Younes, Sinwar commenced preparations for his impending doom. Even at that time, he advised Hamas members that Israel would probably present more favorable terms to conclude the conflict following his removal. He maintained that in dealing with Israel, Hamas would possess a strategic advantage as long as they retained control over the hostages, whether they were alive or dead.
Following the killing of Sinwar, one prominent useful idiot, Eyal Winter, a professor of economics and director of the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in Haaretz: “Precisely now it is important to take down Netanyahu and his Messianic government, some of which believe that we are all wrong and that everything is actually a great miracle and the beginning of redemption.
“When the protest fades and disappears after a military success, it conveys to the Israeli government that an impressive military achievement … is also an impressive achievement in the campaign against the protest. This is a perfect incentive for the government to continue fighting even when it is useless and at a terrible cost. Instead, it is advisable to persist in the protest, even – and perhaps especially – after impressive show operations, because without change from the inside, even a complete victory is a loss.”
Perhaps this would help: last month, the Shin Bet and Israel Police arrested a young Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem who was planning to fire on the Kaplan Street protesters. He told his interrogators he intended to murder as many people as possible as revenge for the people of Gaza.
Wouldn’t that be a rich twist?
