Israel has pledged to murder new Hamas head Yahya Sinwar, the claimed mastermind of the October 7 attack, as regional tensions threaten to flare as the Gaza war enters its eleventh month.
The appointment of Sinwar to lead the Palestinian terrorist group comes as Israel braced itself for possible Iranian revenge for the assassination of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, last week in Tehran.
Speaking at a military base on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel was “determined” to protect itself.
“We are prepared both defensively and offensively,” he told new recruits.
Army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi vowed to “find him (Sinwar), attack him” and force Hamas to find someone to replace him.
Sinwar — Hamas’s leader in Gaza since 2017 — has not been seen since the October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history.
A senior Hamas official told AFP Sinwar’s selection sent a message that the organisation “continues its path of resistance”.
Analysts believe Sinwar has been both more reluctant to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and closer to Tehran than Haniyeh, who lived in Qatar.
“If a ceasefire deal seemed unlikely upon Haniyeh’s death, it is even less likely under Sinwar,” said Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, adding Hamas would “only lean further into its hardline militant strategy”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said it is up to Sinwar to help achieve a ceasefire, saying he “has been and remains the primary decider”.
Civilians in both Israel and Gaza met Sinwar’s appointment with unease.
Mohammad al-Sharif, a displaced Gazan, told AFP: “He is a fighter. How will negotiations take place?”
In Tel Aviv, logistics company manager Hanan, who did not want to give his second name, said Sinwar’s appointment meant Hamas “did not see fit to look for someone less militant, someone with a less murderous approach”.
Hezbollah vows response
Hezbollah, Hamas’s Lebanon-based affiliate, has also promised to avenge the killings of Haniyeh and its own military leader Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike in Beirut.
In a televised statement marking one week since Shukr’s death, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed Tuesday that his organization would retaliate “alone or in the context of a unified response from all the axis” of Iran-backed groups in the region.
The United States, which has committed additional warships and jets to the region, has encouraged Iran and Israel to avoid escalation.
This week, President Joe Biden talked with regional leaders, and Blinken told reporters that the message of caution had also been delivered “directly” to Israel and Iran.
French President Emmanuel Macron advised Netanyahu on Wednesday to “avoid a cycle of reprisals” after sending the similar message to his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, according to the French presidency.
Pezeshkian warned Macron in a separate phone call that the West “should immediately stop selling arms and supporting” Israel if it wants to avoid war, according to his office.
Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s death in Iran, but it has admitted conducting the strike on Shukr in Beirut.
Flights cancelled
Throughout the Gaza war, Hezbollah and Israeli troops have exchanged cross-border fire on a nearly daily basis.
An Israeli strike near Jouaiyya, near the border, killed a Hezbollah militant and a civilian on Wednesday, according to a Lebanese security source. The Israeli military claimed it had killed a Hamas commander in the area.
The Israeli military later stated that on Wednesday night, its jets destroyed a launcher used by Hezbollah to deploy drones towards the Golan Heights earlier that evening.
Several airlines have halted or curtailed flights to Lebanon due to security concerns, while Egypt reported Iran has ordered civilian airlines to avoid its airspace because it will be conducting military maneuvers overnight.
The United Nations said it was “temporarily” reducing the presence of UN staff family members in Lebanon, but it was not relocating its personnel.
Iran-backed terrorists in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen have joined the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip, which began after the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
According to an AFP calculation based on official Israeli data, the Hamas strike killed 1,198 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians.
Palestinian militants kidnapped 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still detained in Gaza, including 39 who the Israeli military claims are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has killed at least 39,677 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide information on civilian and militant casualties.
Israel’s army announced early Thursday that a strike in Gaza late last month killed top Hamas member Nael Sakhl, who was allegedly involved in “directing terror activities” in the occupied West Bank.
The war has resulted in a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with nearly all of its 2.4 million residents homeless and facing food shortages.
Some supporters sharply criticized Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday for proposing that “it might be justified” to starve the besieged territories.
“No one in the world will allow us to starve two million people, even if it is justified and moral in order to free the hostages,” he stated at a conference earlier this week.
The EU stated that Smotrich’s words demonstrated “contempt for international law and basic principles of humanity.”
France expressed its “deep dismay” at the remarks, while UK Foreign Minister David Lammy urged “the wider Israeli government to retract and condemn them”.