Yahya Sinwar’s Death Could Shake But Not Topple Hamas, Experts Say

Sinwar’s Death Could Shake but Not Topple Hamas, Experts Say

Analysts call the killing of several Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, a deep blow to the Palestinian militant group, but expect it to keep fighting.

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By Ben Hubbard

Reporting from Istanbul

He was there from the early days of Hamas, rose through the ranks to lead the organization and equipped it for the deadliest assault on Israel in its history.

And now, Yahya Sinwar is dead, depriving the militant group of a ruthless, intelligent leader and raising questions about what direction its battered remnants will take in their fight against Israel.

Mr. Sinwar’s killing was a powerful blow to a violent organization that had already been gravely damaged by a year of brutal combat with Israel. Though he was only the latest senior leader to be killed since the war began, few experts expect Hamas to collapse. Still, the men’s elimination could cause a leadership vacuum and more chaos in its ranks.

Among the senior figures killed since January are Saleh al-Arouri, a key liaison with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon; Muhammad Deif, the shadowy head of Hamas’s military wing, who Israel said was killed in July; and Ismael Haniyeh, who headed its political office in Qatar, making him central to cease-fire negotiations.

Mr. Sinwar was loathed by Israelis for starting the war and taking Israeli hostages, and resented by many Gazans who blamed him for the extensive suffering the conflict has brought to their lives. But he was revered by Hamas loyalists for helping plot the assault on Israel last October that left 1,200 people dead and 250 others dragged back to Gaza as hostages.

That made him an “iconic figure” among the group’s members, and a hard one to replace, said Fuad Khuffash, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas.

“Sinwar was an extremely important man in the movement,” Mr. Khuffash said. “His assassination is no easy matter. But it won’t make Hamas retreat and surrender.”

Israel has assassinated dozens of Hamas leaders and killed many thousands of its fighters since the group was founded in the 1980s with the goal of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist, Palestinian state. Those blows have never prevented Hamas from rebounding — often with even greater ferocity.

Before the Gaza war began last October, Hamas was stronger and more institutionalized than ever before. It served as the de facto government for Gaza’s 2.2 million people, wielding power over their lives, collecting fees and gathering resources. That included at some points about $30 million monthly from Qatar that was intended to help keep Gaza’s government functioning. Hamas’s position in turn helped it build its military wing, which boasted many thousands of fighters and arsenals of rockets and other weapons.

Israel responded to Hamas’s assault with a devastating air campaign and ground invasion that has left vast portions of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 42,000 people, according to the Gaza health authorities. That figure does not differentiate between fighters and civilians, but Israel claims to have largely gutted the organization, killing large numbers of its combatants and blowing up many of the tunnels they use to covertly move around the territory.

While Israel has not laid out a clear plan for how the war will end or who will run Gaza afterward, it has vowed to prevent Hamas from resuming any role in governance. Yet Hamas has continued to fight, frequently popping back up and launching new attacks in areas that Israel claimed to have cleared.

“Hamas has been fighting this war for a year in a very closed space, so it is already decentralized to the limit, fighting in very small units of a dozen or less fighters who have a lot of autonomy,” said Ramzy Mardini, an associate at the Pearson Institute at the University of Chicago who studies rebellions and civil wars.

Mr. Sinwar’s death is unlikely to affect those operations, he said, since he had lost the ability to direct them, anyway.

But Mr. Sinwar was key to Hamas’s top-level decisions, such as whether to agree to a cease-fire, and officials involved in those talks considered him a hard-liner who was less likely to compromise than his comrades outside Gaza.

It was unclear on Friday when Hamas will announce a successor, or how that transition will affect the negotiating stance of a group that has long been run by a combination of political officials based in Qatar and political and military leaders in Gaza.

In Gaza, Mr. Sinwar might be replaced by his brother Mohammad, a senior figure in the group’s military wing, according to a Western diplomat familiar with Hamas. His logical successor as the head of Hamas’s political office would be Khalil al-Hayya, Mr. Sinwar’s deputy, who is based in Qatar, the diplomat said.

Other prominent remaining Hamas figures include Khaled Meshal and Mousa Abu Marzouk, both former heads of the political office.

It is also possible that Mr. Sinwar’s death will cause chaos inside the organization, making it unclear who has the ability to negotiate on Hamas’s behalf and leaving no one with the stature needed to ensure the compliance of Gaza’s armed groups with any agreement that is reached.

Hamas has never claimed the allegiances of a majority of Palestinians, and many in Gaza celebrated the news of Mr. Sinwar’s death, blaming him for a war that has caused them such suffering.

But Hamas’s message of violent resistance to Israel has long found its recruits among those who have lost the most in the conflict: Palestinian refugees forced into permanent exile with the creation of Israel and their descendants; people who have lost homes and loved ones to Israeli bombs; and young men with no prospects for better lives.

The possibility of any form of statehood or self-determination for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza appears more remote now than it has in many years. And the Gaza war — by killing, wounding, orphaning and displacing so many people — has increased hatred of Israel among Palestinians and the despair that direct recruits to groups like Hamas, no matter who leads them.

“The root of the problem is not Sinwar or even Hamas,” said Hassan Abu Haniyeh, an expert on militant groups at the Politics and Society Institute in Jordan. “The problem is the next day. What are you going to do? You can kill all of Hamas, but what are you going to do on the day after?”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Our Coverage of the Middle East Crisis

• A Surprise Battlefield Encounter: Although Yahya Sinwar was a major target of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the soldiers who killed the militant chief had not expected to run across him, Israeli officials said.
• Shake but Not Topple Hamas: Analysts call the killing of several Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, a deep blow to the Palestinian militant group, but expect it to keep fighting.
• Egypt Replaces Key Gaza Mediator: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt replaced the powerful head of the country’s intelligence services, according to state media, switching out the Egyptian official who plays a leading role in cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
• U.S. Indicts 2 Hackers: The Justice Department has accused two Sudanese brothers of cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure as well as preventing possibly lifesaving alerts from reaching Israelis as the Hamas attack unfolded.
• Hunger in Gaza: The U.N. has warned of the risk of famine for some 400,000 civilians in northern Gaza amid a renewed Israeli offensive in the enclave. Families say they are rationing what little food they can find.