Hamas confirmed on Friday that its leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and reiterated its stance that hostages the militant group took from Israel a year ago will not be released until there is a ceasefire in Gaza and a withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The group’s position rejected a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day earlier that his country’s military will keep fighting until the hostages are released and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.
The conflicting stands signal continued deep resistance on both sides to ending the war, even as US President Joe Biden and other world leaders press the case that Mr Sinwar’s death is a turning point that should be used to unlock stalled cease-ire negotiations.
The standoff comes as Israel’s war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Hamas ally backed by Iran, has intensified in recent weeks.
Hezbollah said on Friday it planned to launch a new phase of fighting by sending more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel.
The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike late last month, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon earlier this month.
Mr Sinwar, the former lead of Hamas, died “confronting the occupation army until the last moment of his life”, said his Qatar-based deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, who represented Hamas during several rounds of ceasefire negotiations.
Hamas will not return any of the hostages, Mr al-Hayya said, “before the end of the aggression on Gaza and the withdrawal from Gaza”.
Hamas heralded Mr Sinwar in a statement, calling him a hero for “not retreating, brandishing his weapon, engaging and confronting the occupation army at the forefront of the ranks”.
The statement appeared to refer to a video the Israeli military circulated of his apparent last moments in which a man sits on a chair in a severely damaged building, badly wounded and covered in dust.
In the video, the man raises his hand and throws a stick at an approaching Israeli drone.
Mr Sinwar was the chief architect of the Hamas raid on Israel last year that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children.
The war has destroyed vast swathes of Gaza, displaced about 90 per cent of its population of 2.3 million people and has left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
The killing appeared to be a chance frontline encounter with Israeli troops on Wednesday, and it could shift the dynamics of the Gaza war even as Israel presses its offensive against Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other areas of the country.
Hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel nearly every day since the Israel-Hamas war began, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the country’s north.
More than one million people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground offensive.
Iran, which also supports Hamas, hailed Mr Sinwar on Friday as a martyr who can inspire others in challenging Israel.
“We, and countless others around the world, salute his selfless struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“Martyrs live forever, and the cause for liberation of Palestine from occupation is more alive than ever.”
Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas politically in Gaza, and killing Mr Sinwar was a top military priority.
But Mr Netanyahu said in a speech announcing the killing on Thursday night that “our war is not yet ended”.
Still, the governments of Israel’s allies and exhausted residents of Gaza expressed hope that Mr Sinwar’s death would pave the way for an end to the war.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said Mr Sinwar’s death provides “an extraordinary opportunity to achieve a lasting ceasefire” and suggested the US could have a role in helping to stabilise Gaza in the future.
“Hopefully countries in the region will step up there,” Mr Austin said at a Nato meeting in Brussels.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, meeting her counterpart in Lebanon, said European countries are working for a “sustainable ceasefire” in both that country and in Gaza. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said “a diplomatic solution should overcome” the fighting.
But a day after Mr Biden described Mr Sinwar’s death an “opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power”, he acknowledged the difficulty of forging a ceasefire there, saying it might be easier to negotiate a stop to the fighting in Lebanon.
“It’s going to be harder in Gaza,” Mr Biden told reporters Friday after meeting European leaders in Berlin.
A White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, said it was “too soon” to assess who Hamas “might anoint as Sinwar’s successor and what that individual may be willing to pursue”.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead.
This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.
Here’s my full statement. pic.twitter.com/cSe1czhd9s— President Biden (@POTUS) October 17, 2024
In Israel, families of hostages still held in Gaza demanded the Israeli government use Mr Sinwar’s killing as a way to restart negotiations to bring home their loved ones.
There are about 100 hostages remaining in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says are dead.
“We are at an inflection point where the goals set for the war with Gaza have been achieved, all but the release of the hostages,” Ronen Neutra, father of the Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra, said in a video statement.
“Sinwar, who was described as a major obstacle to a deal, is no longer alive.”
Mr Netanyahu was planning to convene a special meeting on Friday to discuss hostage negotiations, an Israeli official with knowledge of the negotiations said.
Israel’s military said on Friday it allowed 30 trucks of food, water, medical and other supplies into northern Gaza, as the country faces pressure from the US to ramp up aid.
There was no immediate confirmation from the UN that the aid arrived and was being distributed in the north.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah issued a statement on Friday saying its fighters have used new types of precision-guided missiles and explosive drones against Israel for the first time in recent days.
The statement appeared to refer to an explosives-laden drone that evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defence system and hit a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel last Sunday, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens.
The group announced earlier this week it fired a new type of missile called Qader 2 toward the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military said on Friday it would activate an additional reserve brigade to the north of its country to support troops in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese health ministry said six people were killed in the past 24 hours of fighting, bringing the death toll over the past year to 2,418, a quarter of whom were women and children.
On Friday Israel said its forces killed two militants who crossed into Israeli territory south of the Dead Sea from neighbouring Jordan.
Such infiltrations are relatively rare, especially as Israel has ramped up border security since the Hamas attack in October 2023.
