Various commentors in major Western newspapers saw the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week as an opportunity to reach a ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza, but official statements out of Tel Aviv and Washington suggest otherwise.
It is important to link these statements with developments on the ground, where Israel is intensifying its bombing raids and crimes against humanity in Gaza and escalating its destruction and war crimes in Lebanon.
Further expansion of the war looms amid Israel’s threats to respond to Iran’s retaliatory strike earlier this month, the current coordination between it and its Western allies over how to carry it out, and the arrival of more advanced US military hardware in order to do so.
In the absence of any prospect of getting the current Israeli government to change course, the region looks to be heading towards further warfare and a bleak and uncertain future.
Official US and Israeli statements have hailed Sinwar’s death as a victory that would debilitate Hamas and an opportunity to free the hostages in Gaza without having to pay the price of doing so.
US President Joe Biden and Vice President and Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris have delivered the same message, with Biden telephoning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him on the killing, comparing it to the assassination of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and adding that “there is now a chance for ‘tomorrow’ in Gaza.”
In a press statement, Biden described Sinwar as an “insurmountable obstacle” to achieving the goals of a “day after” in Gaza without Hamas and for a political settlement.
Harris said that “justice has been served” by Sinwar’s killing and that “the US, Israel, and the entire world are better off as a result.” Describing Hamas as “decimated” with its “leadership eliminated,” she called it “an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.”
She added the caveats “[in a manner] such that Israel is secure and the hostages are released and the suffering in Gaza ends” – as though that suffering had been visited on the Palestinians by some natural disaster rather than by Israeli aggression.
She concluded by paying lip-service to the need to realise the Palestinians’ right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination, avoiding any mention of a mechanism for how to bring that about.
Other US officials echoed the line about Sinwar’s death presenting an opportunity to end the war, but said they felt it premature to conclude that this could happen anytime soon. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saw an opportunity to reach an agreement over the release of the hostages while US State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller reiterated the claim that Sinwar had been an obstacle to a hostage deal.
White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said that while Hamas had been weakened and its military infrastructure destroyed, “that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still lethal.” US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke of the priority of securing the release of the hostages and bringing humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza before reaffirming that US forces were “on standby in the region to defend Israel”.
The foregoing statements tell us Washington’s real position: Israel has the US green light and unreserved political and military backing to continue perpetuating its crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, and now in Lebanon, under the ever-handy pretext of self-defence.
The Palestinians come as an afterthought, a question reduced to humanitarian relief, and even this receives little more than hollow verbiage.
Washington’s unmitigated pro-Israeli stances are not shared by a growing number of Americans, who view the Netanyahu government and its wanton destruction of Gaza negatively, according to a recent Gallup poll. Even in Israel, an opinion poll conducted after Sinwar’s death found that more than half of Israelis support a prisoner-exchange deal and an end to the war on Gaza.
The Netanyahu government, however, has vowed to continue the war on Gaza and Lebanon, regardless of Sinwar’s death, claiming that an opportunity is at hand to dismantle the “Axis of Evil” and shape a new future. That future is to be born out of the crucible of a multifront war that could engulf the region, yet no one in Israel seems able or willing to stop the country’s government from executing such designs.
The Israeli security establishment, headed by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, has openly called for a prisoner-exchange deal and a months-long ceasefire in Gaza. Yet, this has not materialised, and nor is it expected to.
Gallant and other Israeli generals have criticised Netanyahu for not producing a plan outlining what an end to the war would look like. He also maintains that the Israeli Cabinet’s decision to maintain an Israeli military presence in the Salaheddin (Philadelphi) Corridor, a move opposed by both Egypt and Hamas, is a main obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, further confirming that Netanyahu has no intention to end the war on Gaza.
Meanwhile, Hamas Political Bureau member Khalil Al-Hayya said that Sinwar’s martyrdom has not changed Hamas’ conditions for a ceasefire and hostage exchange. The hostages in Gaza will only return “at the end of the aggression on Gaza, a full withdrawal, and the release of our prisoners,” he said.
Israeli security experts believe that Hamas still maintains an effective organisational structure even after Sinwar’s death. They add that it would be difficult to dismantle this structure without killing other key Hamas figures in Gaza.
Some analysts predict that the movement will recover quickly, relying on a new generation of leaders to redevelop its military and technological capabilities and attract new leaders from a generation that has suffered unfathomable brutality.
Writing in the US magazine Foreign Policy, commentator Steven Cook observes that Hamas is still very much alive despite Sinwar’s death. He reminded readers of the countless assassinations Israel has carried out without deterring the resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon from pressing forward with their struggle. Resistance, he said, is part of an identity, and Sinwar’s death has become a source of inspiration for many.
UK journalist Jonathan Freedland writing in the London newspaper The Guardian agreed, saying that the video footage showing Sinwar fighting to the end and dying a martyr’s death had already given birth to a legend.
Likewise, US commentator Audrey Kurth Cronin in Foreign Affairs concluded that “Sinwar is dead, but Hamas will survive.” Hamas is a long-established organisation that is over 40 years old and has a political agenda and supporters inside and outside of Palestine, making it an unsuitable target for a “decapitation strategy.”
Meanwhile, commentator Daniel Byman, in the same periodical, held that Sinwar’s death did not mark a turning point and did not bring Israel closer to governing Gaza. “It represents a political victory for Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Had Israel wanted to end the war on Gaza, Sinwar’s death would have been the time to do so, but Netanyahu has no interest in doing so. This idea was aired in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, as well as by Freedland, who pointed out that if Sinwar had been an obstacle to a settlement, Netanyahu “has been no less stubborn in his unwillingness to do a deal that might end the war.”
Public opinion polls in Israel indicate that if elections were held today, Netanyahu’s Likud Party would come out ahead. Netanyahu’s hold on power depends on far-right minority parties that openly call for the annexation of the West Bank and oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state and all other Palestinian rights. They are also fervent supporters of continuing the wars against Gaza and Lebanon.
As long as Netanyahu stays in power, the genocidal war on Gaza will continue while the West Bank awaits a similar fate. The carpet-bombing of Lebanon will persist, while the likelihood of further missile exchanges with Iran will suck the West more and more into these confrontations, in what may be an unstoppable spiral.
This is the spectre that hovers over the region, as long as the US continues to support every step the far-right Netanyahu government takes. While the US mouths pieties about humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, it continues to send the lethal weapons that Israel uses to massacre them everyday.
The US says it opposes settler violence in the West Bank and imposes token sanctions on a handful of unknowns, but it refuses to touch the most notorious godfathers of settler violence, the Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, or the governmental and semi-governmental entities that are integral to the illegal settlement expansion.
The US has the means to exert meaningful pressure on the Israeli government to compel it to stop the genocide and landgrabs in Palestine, to let humanitarian aid into Gaza, and to stop its dangerous regional escalation. However, it has no intention of using them.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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