Israel must finish Hamas off

Seth J. Frantzman | October 18, 2024

Masked Hamas militants (Getty Images)

The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a clash with Israeli troops could help transform Israel’s war efforts against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It has been a difficult year for Israel fighting this long war. Both groups have been aided by the Iranian regime, which has supplied them with weapons and backing. Iran has also been helping other terrorist groups and militias in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, its goal being to surround Israel with threats, and chip away at Israel’s defences. Drones have attacked from Iraq, ballistic missiles have been fired from Yemen, terrorists have crossed into Israel from Jordan. Today two terrorists tried to infiltrate Israel from Jordan’s Dead Sea area. They were killed in a clash with the IDF.

This axis will keep attempting to do Israel harm. However, the country now has a chance to grasp success on two fronts and hand Iran and its proxies a historic defeat. With Sinwar gone and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah eliminated in an Israeli airstrike last month, there is an opening.

In order to understand how Sinwar’s elimination may change the war it’s important to understand Israel’s current goals and also how the fronts look in Gaza and Lebanon. Hamas started this war with around 24 battalions of fighters, which represented up to 30,000 men under arms. It also had thousands of rockets and hundreds of miles of tunnels in Gaza.

The IDF defeated the Hamas battalions in battles that took place for most of 2024. For instance, the Hamas units in Khan Younis were mostly defeated by April. In May the IDF went into Rafah to clear Hamas from areas near the Egyptian border. The result of these operations was that the IDF was also able to find and eliminate many key Hamas leaders in Gaza, such as Mohammed Dief and Marwan Issa, two key members of Sinwar’s leadership circle.

The walls closed in on Sinwar as his lieutenants were killed. On 16 October his luck ran out. He was seen by IDF troops along with two other men moving between several houses in Rafah. Sinwar fled to the second floor of a house, but he was wounded and killed in subsequent clashes with Israeli troops. His dead body was found the next day by IDF troops when they entered the home. While some pro-Hamas commentators have depicted Sinwar’s last moments as a heroic death of a ‘martyr’, the fact is that Sinwar was killed in the ruins of Rafah, destruction that he brought on Gaza through his genocidal attack on Israel on October 7.

Hamas has few leaders left in Gaza. Sinwar’s brother, who is also a leader in Hamas, is still at-large in Gaza. However, the rest of Hamas’ remaining leadership resides in Qatar. Hamas will have difficulty reconstituting its forces. If Israel moves quickly to consolidate gains and exploit the death of Sinwar, it may be able to finally collapse Hamas rule in Gaza. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007 and it has brought nothing but ruin and destruction to the area. Now is the time for Israel to press forward with the opportunity that Sinwar’s death brings.

Hezbollah joined the war against Israel at the prodding of Iran. However, it has also suffered the loss of numerous commanders throughout in its three weeks of war with Israel. Hezbollah may see the death of Sinwar as an opening to come to an agreement with Israel and establish a ceasefire. If it sees that Hamas is on its last legs, then it may prefer to sue for peace rather than waste more of its fighters in a lost cause against Israel.