Yahya Sinwar has not been seen since the October 7 attack (File)
Israel vowed to “eliminate” new Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of the October 7 attack, whose appointment further fueled regional tensions as the Gaza war entered its eleventh month on Wednesday.
Sinwar’s appointment as leader of the Palestinian group came as Israel braced for possible Iranian retaliation following the assassination of his predecessor Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran last week.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a military base on Wednesday that Israel is “determined” to defend itself.
“We are prepared both defensively and offensively,” he told the new recruits.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said late Tuesday that Sinwar’s promotion was “yet another compelling reason to quickly eliminate him and wipe this despicable organization off the face of the earth.”
Sinwar – Hamas 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 that Sinwar’s selection sent a message that the organization “continues its path of resistance.”
Hamas’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah congratulated Sinwar and said the appointment confirmed that “the enemy… has failed to achieve its objectives” by killing Hamas leaders and officials.
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 agreement seemed unlikely after Haniyeh’s death, it is even less likely under Sinwar,” said Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group.
“The group will only lean further on its hard-line militant strategy of recent years,” she added.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters it was up to Sinwar to help reach a ceasefire, saying he “is and remains the key decision maker”.
Citizens in both Israel and Gaza reacted to Sinwar’s appointment with discomfort.
Mohammad al-Sharif, a displaced Gazan, told AFP: “He is a fighter. How will the negotiations take place?”
In Tel Aviv, logistics manager Hanan, who did not want to give his middle name, said Sinwar’s appointment meant Hamas “didn’t see fit to look for someone less militant, someone with a less murderous approach.”
Hezbollah vows response
The Iran-backed Hezbollah has also vowed to avenge the deaths of Haniyeh and its own military commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli attack in Beirut hours earlier.
In a televised address marking a week since Shukr’s death, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday that his group would retaliate “alone or in the context of a united response from all axes” of Iranian-backed groups in the region.
The United States, which has sent additional warships and fighter planes to the region, has called on both Iran and Israel to prevent an escalation.
President Joe Biden held phone calls on Tuesday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
“No one should allow this conflict to escalate. We have engaged in intensive diplomacy with allies and partners, delivering that message directly to Iran. We communicated that message directly to Israel,” Blinken told reporters.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a phone call that the West must “immediately stop selling weapons and supporting” Israel if it wants to avoid war, his office said.
The Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation met on Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Gambian Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangara, whose country currently chairs the bloc, said Haniyeh’s “horrific” killing risked “leading to a wider conflict that could involve the entire region.”
Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s killing but confirmed it carried out the attack on Shukr.
It held the Hezbollah commander responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights that killed twelve children.
Flights cancelled
Hezbollah has exchanged cross-border fire with Israeli forces almost daily during the Gaza war.
The group said on Tuesday that six of its fighters were killed in Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon and that it had launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at a military base on the Golan Heights in retaliation.
Numerous airlines have suspended or limited flights to Lebanon to daylight hours.
The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparked by the Palestinian group’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, has already attracted Iranian-backed militants in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Palestinian Hamas operatives have seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 39 who the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military retaliation campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,677 people, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-held territory, which did not provide details of civilian and militant deaths.
According to ministry figures, the death toll included two dozen deaths in the past 24 hours.
Israel said its air force had struck “dozens of terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip” in the past day.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
