Considered the mastermind of the attacks of October 7, 2023, Yahya Sinouar had been hunted for a year by Israeli forces. They achieved their goal on Wednesday.
AFP
The Israeli army confirmed Thursday the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar, considered one of the architects of the attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil. He was killed “after a year-long hunt” during an operation carried out on Wednesday in the south of the Gaza Strip, she said in a statement. Hamas did not immediately confirm his death.
Information had put Israeli forces on the trail of the Hamas leader in recent weeks and they “identified and eliminated three terrorists”, the body identification procedures having then “confirmed that Yahya Sinouar had been eliminated”.
“Act, now more than ever”
Very quickly after this announcement, attention focused on the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. Israeli President Isaac Herzog called for “action by all means possible, now more than ever,” to bring back the 101 hostages still held in Gaza, he said
on X.
The Families Forum, the main association of relatives of hostages in Israel, followed suit and “urgently” demanded that the authorities “take advantage of this major breakthrough to ensure the return of the hostages”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the “elimination of Sinwar” was an “opportunity for the immediate release of the hostages” and opened the way for “profound change in Gaza: without Hamas and without control of Iran.
Envisioning “a better future”
Abroad too, the hope of seeing the situation in the Middle East evolve favorably has arisen. The US president bluntly declared that it was a “good day for Israel, the United States and the world.” “It is now possible to envisage a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, as well as a political settlement offering a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Joe Biden said in a statement. “Yahya Sinouar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all these goals. This obstacle no longer exists.”
Germany, through its Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, called on Hamas to “immediately release all the hostages and lay down their arms”, insisting that “the suffering of the people of Gaza should finally end”. She called Yahya Sinouar a “cruel murderer” and a “terrorist who wanted to destroy Israel and its people.”
The French president also pleaded in favor of the release of the hostages. “Yahya Sinouar was the main person responsible for the terrorist attacks and barbaric acts of October 7,” Emmanuel Macron wrote on X, saying “think with emotion of the victims, including 48 of our compatriots, and their loved ones.”
Not finished, warns Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the death of Yahya Sinouar an “important milestone” but warned it did not mean the end of the war in Gaza. “Evil has taken a severe blow but the task that awaits us is not yet finished,” he said.
The death of Yahya Sinouar is a major blow to Hamas, already very weakened after a year of war. It could favor a resumption of negotiations on a truce and the release of the hostages, analysts believe.
In Israel, the death of the man who was considered the mastermind of the attack of October 7, 2023 represented “a personal matter” for many, and in particular for Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister has set the eradication of Hamas as his war goal, recalls Michael Horowitz, expert for the security consultancy Le Beck.
A radical activist out of the shadows
All-powerful military leader, then political leader of Hamas, the death of Yahya Sinouar is “a psychological explosion” for the movement, believes David Khalfa, specialist in the region, author of “Israel-Palestine, Year Zero”.
Yahya Sinouar, radical activist and man in the shadows, was 61 years old. He had been at the head of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza since 2017. He was then named political leader of Hamas in early August after the death of Ismaïl Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack blamed on Israel.
(afp/jfz)
