A member of the Houthi security forces stands guard in front of a billboard showing late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as protesters rally to show support to Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, on Oct. 18.Khaled Abdullah/Reuters
R. David Harden is a former assistant administrator at USAID, a former USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza, and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace.
Israel brought justice to Yahya Sinwar.
The Hamas leader’s death – he was killed Wednesday by an Israel Defense Forces training unit in Gaza – is a monumental event in this increasingly complex war. The question for Israelis, Palestinians and all of us is: what is next?
In the short term, much will rest with Hamas and the 101 hostages still in Gaza. Hamas may avenge Mr. Sinwar’s death by murdering more hostages. If it does, the tragedy of this war will only deepen and extend. There is also a possibility that the new Hamas leadership, based in Doha, will cut a ceasefire deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. This outcome could begin a de-escalation of this consuming war.
To their credit, the Israelis have executed a string of audacious victories against their adversaries in Gaza and southern Lebanon in the last few months. In addition to Mr. Sinwar, the Israelis killed the rest of Hamas’s top leadership.
The Israelis also eliminated Hezbollah’s leadership, first through the astounding pager and walkie-talkie attacks, taking thousands of Hezbollah fighters off the battlefield, and then killing Hassan Nasrallah, its charismatic and fearsome leader. On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant summed it up: “Our enemies cannot hide. We will pursue and eliminate them.” We do not know Hamas’s political and military strategy after Mr. Sinwar’s death – and they themselves may not either – but for this next generation of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership, their days are likely numbered.
While Israeli success on the battlefield is undisputed, the humanitarian cost to civilians in southern Lebanon and particularly Gaza has been staggering. The Biden administration has demanded that Israel allow more aid to Gaza or risk losing U.S. military support. This war has further fuelled civilian grievances in Gaza, and among Israelis as well, which will last generations. Yahya Sinwar was born from war. After this past year, there will be many more Yahya Sinwars in the decades ahead.
Today, de-escalation or further violence rests on two outlying but related triggers. First, the U.S. is in the final sprint of its presidential elections. Kamala Harris would like nothing more than to table Israeli and Palestinian issues and concentrate on defeating her Republican opponent. Donald Trump, of course, stokes chaos and will criticize any Biden/Harris action. Mr. Biden’s actions on the Middle East over the next couple of weeks will affect the election.
Second, Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to strike Iran in response to Tehran’s largely ineffective firing of 200 ballistic missiles into Israel. Clearly, Mr. Netanyahu has a new calculation to make given Mr. Sinwar’s death. Does Mr. Netanyahu strike Iran aggressively or, as in April, temper the Israeli response to signal deterrence? The Biden administration has not been effective in reading Mr. Netanyahu or reining in his ambitions. With the Nov. 5 election so close, it is hard to predict Israeli or Iranian motivations and responses.
Mr. Sinwar’s death has also given rise to loose talk among pundits about how the Biden team plans to build peace from the event. Israel, with unclean hands over its harsh treatment of Gazans, may have also given the West and the Gulf states an opportunity to check Iranian expansionist ambitions while freeing the Palestinians from Hamas and the Lebanese from Hezbollah. To seize this opportunity, a wide range of actors, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran and the Houthis of Yemen, must all implicitly agree to walk back the conflict. Yet, any of these adverse actors can serve as spoilers by continuing their attacks on the other.
Finally, even if the Israeli response to the Iranian attack is measured, the clerics of Tehran almost certainly will accelerate their nuclear weapon breakout time – the time required to produce material for a nuclear weapon – which according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was down to one or two weeks in July. An Iranian nuclear weapon ends the chance for stability in the Middle East and serves as an existential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Right now, the Biden administration and its allies must lean forward with bare-knuckle diplomacy to capitalize on the opportunity arising from Mr. Sinwar’s death and push for a broad-based ceasefire, the return of the hostages and a rebuilding of Gaza. But given the U.S. administration’s track record, the uncertainty of the presidential elections, and the unpredictability of the Middle East, we should not be sanguine. In a region where despair outpaces hope, we should be wary about thinking that Mr. Sinwar’s death will lead to a new Middle East.