A poster by Israeli Defense Forces of Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar with 'Eliminated' written in Hebrew.
Tel Aviv/Washington/Berlin: Israel announced that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was killed in an Israeli military operation in Gaza yesterday, October 17, 2024. The Israeli military also released drone footage it claimed, showed Sinwar’s final moments.
“Yahya Sinwar is dead. He was killed in Rafah by the brave soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today in Tel Aviv. According to him while this is not the end of the war in Gaza, “it’s the beginning of the end”. In a message to the people of Gaza, he said, “This war can end tomorrow. It can end if Hamas lays down its arms and returns our hostages.”
The United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, while on Air Force One with President Joe Biden flying to Berlin, called the prime minister of Qatar, who has been one of the two mediators with Hamas working to reach an end to the war. He also called the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia to talk about the path forward. Blinken will have additional contacts in the days ahead. Biden will talk to Netanyahu in the coming days.
“Over the past few weeks, there have been no negotiations for an end to the war because Sinwar has refused to negotiate. There’s been no path to ending this war because Sinwar has refused to talk about releasing the hostages or coming to a ceasefire. We now see an opportunity with him being removed from the battlefield, being removed from the leadership of Hamas, and we want to seize that opportunity,” the US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in Washington.
He added, “What we would hope, is that whoever the next leader of Hamas is, he will look at what has happened over the past year, and look at the suffering that Hamas’s actions have brought upon the Palestinian people who they aim to represent – whose cause they aim to advance, and will look and decide that they ought to pursue a different path forward. They ought to pursue a path that isn’t one of death and destruction and chaos, and harm to Israeli civilians and harm to Palestinian civilians, but one that the United States has presented, that Egypt has presented, that Qatar has presented, that other countries in the region and around the world have presented and endorsed. And so that’s what we’ll be pushing for…We ultimately want to see a path forward that allows Palestinians in Gaza to rebuild their lives, to rebuild their neighbourhoods, to have security; to have Palestinian-led governance that they choose, not that it’s imposed upon them by the outside the world; to live free from the grip of a brutal terrorist organization as opposed to how they have been living in Gaza for the past couple of decades; and ultimately, an independent Palestinian state where Gaza is reunited with the West Bank”.
Netanyahu pointed out that Sinwar launched the “massacre” against Israel on October 7, 2023, and declared, “Today, the mastermind of this day of sheer evil is no more”. He also delivered a “message of hope” to the peoples of the region – “The axis of terror that was built by Iran is collapsing before our eyes. [Hezbollah chief Sayyid Hassan] Nasrallah is gone. His deputy Mohsen is gone. Haniyeh is gone. Deif is gone. Sinwar is gone. The reign of terror that the Iranian regime has imposed on its own people and on the peoples of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen – this too will come to an end.”
The Israeli Prime Minister reiterated that Hamas was holding 101 hostages in Gaza, who were citizens of 23 countries, and asserted Israel’s commitment to “doing everything in our power to bring all of them home”. He assured that Israel would guarantee the safety of all those who return the hostages.
While Netanyahu singled out Sinwar as the person who launched the October 7, 2023, massacre against Israel, which he said was the “bloodiest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust”, the United States termed Sinwar as a “brutal, vicious terrorist responsible for the death of American citizens, Israelis, and civilians from more than 30 countries across the world”.
“That is the blood-soaked legacy that Yahya Sinwar leaves behind. He didn’t just launch this conflict, but for the past year has refused the efforts of the United States and our partners to end it; refused to return home the hostages who have been separated from their families for more than a year; refused to agree to a ceasefire proposal endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and countries around the world; and who in recent weeks refused to even negotiate at all on a ceasefire and an end to the war,” Miller said.
The US endorsed Netanyahu’s statement that it was very much Sinwar’s decision – to launch the terrorist attacks of October 7 which unleashed a year of tragedy in the Middle East.
Netanyahu said, “Sinwar’s terrorists murdered in cold blood 1,200 people. That’s elderly people, Holocaust survivors, children. They brutally raped women. They beheaded men. They burned babies alive. And they took 251 women, men and children hostage to the dungeons of Gaza. But to those who would harm our hostages, I have another message: Israel will hunt you down and bring you to justice”. Ever since more than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza, many of them civilians, as Israel retaliated. There are 2 million Palestinians who, as Washinton stated, “continue to suffer the consequences of Sinwar’s decision to endanger their lives”.
Miller said that over the days ahead, the United States will redouble its efforts to return the hostages home, to bring an end to this war, to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people, and to allow the people of Gaza to begin to rebuild their lives.
Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a joint statement in Berlin today, claiming Yahya Sinwar “was a brutal murderer and terrorist who was bent on eradicating Israel and its people”.
According to the joint statement, Sinwar stood in the way of a ceasefire in Gaza. “His death can create momentum to end the conflict. All hostages must be released. At the same time, humanitarian aid must be surged to the civilians in Gaza in need. Germany and the United States, together with partners, won‘t spare any effort on this path,” the joint statement said.
– global bihari bureau
