Friday 18 October 2024

What next after the violent death of Yahya Sinwar?

When Osama bin Laden was killed by US SEAL commnandos, there were hopes that al-Qaeda would be so totally demoralised that the terrorist threat they posed around the globe would be emasculated and would crumble to nothing. Of course it had a major effect on the operational capabilities of the terrorist organisation, but a new leader was chosen and al-Qaeda kept going, albeit without their spiritual founder and without the apparent ability any longer to carry out a major attack on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity. Now that the Israelis have killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, will this spell the end of the Hamas organisation and bring the war with Israel to an end? First of all, it is true to say that the killing of the ooverall leader of Hamas and the architect of the October 7 brutal assault on Israel is going to set back the group so much that for the next few months they will just hide away and struggle to survive. During this period, Israel will no doubt capitalise on the death of Sinwar by aggressively going for the remnants of Hamas. Will this mean the end of Hamas? Finally? The tragedy is that whoever is picked as the new leader of Hamas, they still have 101 hostages, a third of them dead, and they will probably do everything they can to keep the war going, using the hostages as human shields. Sinwar is dead, but Hamas will fight on.

No comments:

Post a Comment