Gaza: Netanyahu’s decision and the pressures he receives – Is the circle of blood enough? –

The killing of Israel’s most-wanted enemy <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/also-tonight-attacks-on-tel-aviv-and-gaza-hit-home-hamas-leader/" title="Also tonight attacks on Tel Aviv and Gaza hit home Hamas leader”>Yahya Sinwar has been hailed as vindication for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but in a country weary after a year of war it also increases pressure on him to end the fighting and rescue the hostages still in the Gauze.

Netanyahu himself described Sinwar’s death as “the beginning of the end” of a conflict that has spread to Lebanon and Yemen and said it could end if Hamas lays down its arms and returns the 101 Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza .

With Sinwar joining a growing list of Palestinian and Lebanese militant leaders killed by Israel in recent months, fears that a deal would reward the architect of the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel have faded.

“I think what we have now is an opportunity to use this moment in Gaza to close the front in Gaza,” Shira Ephron, Senior Director of Policy Research at the pro-Israel Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation, told Reuters.

“I mean, you have to remember that this goes to the kishka of Israeli society, they took revenge on the mastermind Sinuar.”he said.

The pressures from the White House

However, it remains unclear how Hamas will react to the death of its leader, who was filmed by an Israeli drone sitting badly injured in a damaged building in Gaza before his body was recovered and flown to Israel for tests to confirm his identity. of.

On Friday, Hamas deputy head Khalil Al-Haya said the Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israeli “aggression” ends and its forces withdraw.

Some of Netanyahu’s hardline political allies, including his finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, said Israel must not stop before the “complete surrender” of Hamas.

But with the White House talking of a possible “turning point” in the war, even many supporters of Israel’s hitherto uncompromising approach said there was a chance to end the fighting.

A significant segment of Israeli public opinion, including Netanyahu, has always maintained that the only way to achieve peace is to inflict military defeats on their enemies, even if this comes at the cost of upsetting their allies.

Netanyahu’s political fortunes

Sinwar’s death was seen by many as vindication of Israel’s refusal to bow to international pressure earlier this year and not send ground troops to the city of Rafah, which was then a haven for more than a million Palestinians displaced by the fighting. “That’s the first thing that came to my mind when Sinouar came out to Rafa,” a senior official said on Friday.

Netanyahu has for months resisted pressure from the families of the hostages and world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, to agree to a Gaza ceasefire deal. There were more such calls on Friday.

Netanyahu’s political fortunes, which had reached a nadir last year after the bloodiest day in Israel’s history, have steadily rebounded since then, particularly as a number of militant leaders have been assassinated.

Is the blood circulation enough?

Mohammed Deif, a longtime Hamas military commander, was killed in Gaza in July, and the same month, the movement’s political leader Ismail Haniya was assassinated in Tehran.

Two months later Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut, one of a number of leaders of the Iranian-backed group killed in a wave of Israeli airstrikes.

Adding Sinuar to the list could give Netanyahu a possible “way out” of Gaza, said Carmel Arbit, a non-permanent senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But Sinwar’s death alone does not guarantee the conditions needed for Netanyahu to declare an end to the war, as many hope,” he said.

Key the successor of Sinuar

Much will depend on who succeeds Sinwar, whose death in battle was hailed by many Palestinians as a heroic act of defiance against Israel that should inspire further resistance.

Israel has said it must maintain security control over Gaza when hostilities end. But he has otherwise not revealed detailed ideas for managing the enclave beyond ruling out any role for Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

After a year of war, the enclave is in ruins, with more than 42,000 Palestinians dead and most of the population displaced. Reconstruction will take years, requiring billions of dollars and a great deal of international support.

On the Israeli side, after Hamas-led gunmen invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, few are willing to trust Hamas, even if Sinwar is gone.

But even the president of Kibbutz Beeri, a community near the Gaza Strip that lost one in 10 residents on Oct. 7, said the opportunity presented by Sinwar’s death should be seized. “There is an opportunity,” said Amit Solvi. “And Israel must seize this opportunity with both hands. And to develop it into a diplomatic agreement”.