Adel Hana/AP Photo, File
Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, chairs a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, on April 13, 2022.
One story you can tell about the Middle East over the last year is that Hamas engaged in an attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, and Israel systematically hunted down and killed everyone responsible, culminating with Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the attacks who was apparently killed on Wednesday. There would be alignment between this story and fiction, like the film adaptation of the Munich attacks, where Israel puts its intelligence arm to work to methodically find the Olympic hostage-takers and deliver extrajudicial justice.
That story would be false, because it blots out a year of unmitigated horrors against the Palestinian people in one of the most tragic examples of collective punishment in modern memory. In Munich, the last revenge killing signaled an ending, a settling of accounts. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to say during the announcement of Sinwar’s death, “The war isn’t over.”
That Netanyahu’s personal and political goals vastly outweigh whatever could resemble military goals in this war in Gaza by now has become a cliché. Netanyahu wants to stay out of prison, and ending the war is likely to place him there. So new missions and operations and objectives sprout up for no reason.
Suddenly Bibi’s party has mused about re-settling northern Gaza for the first time in nearly 20 years, while transparently using a policy of mass starvation as a way to implement it. This was enough to even get the Biden foreign policy team to threaten a pullback of military aid—in 30 days, after the election—if the humanitarian situation didn’t improve. This led to 50 aid trucks coming in from Jordan; estimates from earlier in the year were that 500 trucks of aid per day must enter to meet the needs of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the leader of U.S. humanitarian efforts in Gaza whispered months ago that military aid will never be threatened, which I’m sure is not something unknown to the Israeli government. The modest steps at allowing food and water in have to be seen as performative at some level. The U.S. wants to get through the elections, package up some deal with the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates to declare a vassal state in Gaza, and pat themselves on the back. I don’t even think it’s worth crediting this by calling it a plan.
The war has long passed any moment where Israel has any interest in declaring victory, in the fight against terror or in the fight for the security of its people. Even bringing up the fact of continued Israeli hostages inside Gaza seems irrelevant at this point. The war is actually the goal itself, a continuation of punishment to fulfill the needs of the prime minister and his far-right political aims. The annals of blowback indicate pretty clearly that incessant bombing of hospitals and refugee camps will create many Yahya Sinwars, more than who can be killed. That is not something that particularly burdens the Israeli government. Another pretext would serve their continuing interests.
I am glad Sinwar will not be terrorizing anyone any longer. His tactics were disastrous for Palestinians. But if his death cannot lead to an end to the killing, there’s not much hope anything will.
