In Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's death, blooms hope of truce in the Middle East

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar climbed the ranks of the Palestinian militant group to plot the deadliest attack on Israel in its history.

A month after the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the end of elusive Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on October 17 has yet again created the room for restoring peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

For more than a year, the fate of the Sinwar seemed intricately linked to the fate of the war in Gaza. He was the mastermind of assault on Israel last October that claimed up to 1,200 lives, took some 250 hostages and triggered a devastating retaliation that snuffed out tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The elimination of Sinwar is an opportunity, and not a tragedy, for the restive Middle East. He was no ordinary terrorist. He was famed for his brutality towards Gazans and Israelis alike. Sinwar was considered the main opposing force against Hamas’s refusal to surrender, even when Israeli retribution both on air and on ground ravaged the territory and displaced most of its people. His existence kept victory away from Israel, while also ensured that the Hamas was decimated, but not defeated.

Sinwar’s killing has thrown open an opportunity for truce in Gaza as it gives both Israel and Hamas a pretext to soften their stance, according to Israeli and Palestinian analysts The New York Times spoke to. But major obstacles remain — and any solution in Gaza will have only a limited impact on the broader conflict between Israel and Hamas’s regional allies, including Hezbollah. After Sinwar’s death, Hamas’s remaining leadership, demoralised and afraid, might agree to make compromises that he could not, they said.

It might sound too optimistic to believe that Israel would end all its military campaigns immediately, especially given the fact that Hamas still holds many Israeli hostages. Hamas may not respond soon, but Israel can reframe the issue, reminding the world about the hostages. So long as Hamas and Hezbollah are not calling off the war, Israel may also keep destroying their war capabilities, bringing them down to a level where they can't pose an existential threat to it survival. Israel has, in fact, dramatically weakened Iran’s so-called 'Axis of Resistance', which serves the US interests in the region.

Any change, however, does not appear to be around the corner. Hamas is a disciplined group that has survived the loss of many of its leaders, yet its core beliefs remained intact. And Netanyahu must still weigh a renewed push for a hostage deal against the demand of his alliance partners who are in favour of the war. The NYT quoted Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister who has previously threatened to resign from government if the war ends prematurely, saying in a statement: “It is time to increase the military pressure and step on the neck of the terrorist organization, until its complete defeat.”

Fuad Khuffash, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas, said Sinwar’s death would deal the group a crushing blow but would not necessarily change its main negotiating positions. "If you lose someone of Sinwar’s stature, it’s not always easy to find someone quickly with the same strength,” he said. “But Hamas will continue according to the same principles — if they don’t stiffen their position. Whoever replaces this leader will continue his ideological line."

Hamas’s remaining leadership is still unlikely to withdraw its demand for a permanent truce or to accept permanent Israeli occupation of parts of Gaza, according to Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center, a political research group in Ramallah, West Bank. But the new leadership might be more willing than Sinwar to hand over power to a technocratic Palestinian government to ensure the group can survive at least in some form in Gaza. It could also show more flexibility in the negotiations over the hostages, perhaps agreeing to exchange more hostages for fewer Palestinian prisoners.

“You could find a weakened, more pragmatic leadership in Hamas that would make some tactical compromises, though not on the strategic issues,” he said. “They (the Hamas) won’t say: 'Yes, we’ll do whatever you want, Mr Netanyahu'," Dalalsha said. “But for the sake of their own physical survival, they may make more compromises than the man who initiated the whole war.”

Whatever be the response from the Hamas and Netanyahu, their actions in Gaza will leave the broader battle between Israel and Hamas’s regional allies unresolved. Ending the war in Gaza would not immediately contain Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, neither its conflict with Iran.