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      in Elections

      What Will Become of Yahya Sinwar’s Body?

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      The death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was confirmed Thursday by Israeli authorities, but questions remain about the location of his body and what may happen to it in the future.Mr. Sinwar was killed by a gunshot wound to the head in southern Gaza during a firefight, Dr. Chen Kugel, the director of Israel’s national forensic institute, said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday. Dr. Kugel oversaw the autopsy and, after it was complete, Mr. Sinwar’s body was handed over to the Israeli military, he said. He did not know where it was being kept.Israel often holds the corpses of Palestinians, hoping to use them in a future exchange with Hamas or other militant groups, just as Hamas has done with the bodies of hostages killed on or after the Hamas-led attack in Israel. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Sinwar’s body will be held, released back to Hamas or otherwise interred.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.When asked about an exchange, experts said it is unlikely that Israeli officials would create a situation where his body would be laid to rest in a place that could become a shrine.“What I would imagine would happen is there will be a secret dignified burial in an undisclosed place,” said Jon B. Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, adding “when bin Laden was killed, he received a dignified Muslim funeral.”When Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in 2011 by U.S. forces, he was quickly buried at sea. That was likely done to avoid the possibility of a shrine, in accordance with Muslim tradition, which requires burial within 24 hours of death.Dr. Kugel estimated that Mr. Sinwar’s autopsy took place between 24 to 36 hours after death, but he could not specify an exact time.Mr. Alterman said that Israeli officials likely have robust protocols in place to deal with the deaths of militants. “There will be a huge Israeli effort to make sure there is nothing left to be an object of veneration,” he said.The burial site will likely be in Israel, he said, and Israelis will want to avoid a situation where his supporters could try to claim he was buried in Palestinian territories as a martyr.When Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Iran in late July, Israelis did not have custody of his body. Mr. Haniyeh was buried in Qatar’s capital city, Doha, where hundreds of mourners reportedly lined the streets as his coffin, draped in a Palestinian flag, passed through the streets.Aaron Boxerman More

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      in Elections

      Hamas Says Its Demands Are Unchanged as Biden Pushes for Gaza Cease-Fire

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      A top deputy to the killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar vowed that his “banner will not fall” and that the group would hold to its cease-fire conditions.A top Hamas official vowed on Friday that the killing of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, would change nothing for its war with Israel, saying that it would fight on even as President Biden pressed for a deal to stop the conflict in the Gaza Strip and free the remaining hostages there.In Hamas’s first official comments since Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death on Thursday, his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, said that the group maintained its conditions for a cease-fire. He said Hamas still insisted on an end to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, as well as its complete withdrawal from the territory and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.“We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Mr. al-Hayya, who lives in exile in Qatar, said in televised remarks in which he praised Mr. Sinwar for dying on the battlefield and added that his “banner will not fall.” It remained unclear when Hamas would announce a successor to Mr. Sinwar, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza on Wednesday.Mr. Sinwar orchestrated the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages. The assault led to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 42,000 people, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.Mr. Biden and top members of his administration have expressed hope that Mr. Sinwar’s death could provide an opening toward ending the war, which has spread to include allies of Hamas like the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israel last October, and Iran, which backs both militant groups.American officials, as well as many Israelis, have been pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to reach a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the 101 hostages still being held in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar Was Killed After a Surprise Battlefield Encounter

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      Although Yahya Sinwar was a major target of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the soldiers who killed the militant chief had not expected to run across him, Israeli officials said.Yahya Sinwar has been the No. 1 target for Israel since the beginning of the war in Gaza.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesIt was a routine patrol for a unit of Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip. Then a firefight erupted and the Israelis, backed by drones, destroyed part of a building where several militants had taken cover, Israeli officials said.When the dust cleared and they began searching the building, the soldiers found a body that bore a striking resemblance to someone they had not expected to find, a man their country had been hunting for since Oct. 7, 2023: Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas.For more than a year, as tens of thousands of Gazans were killed, Mr. Sinwar had eluded the full force of Israel’s military and security establishment, which had dedicated every means at its disposal to finding and killing him. Many believed he was hiding underground in Gaza and had surrounded himself with hostages taken from Israel.In the end, the Israeli officials said, he was killed above ground on Wednesday, alongside two other militants, with no sign of hostages nearby. The Israeli authorities said they had confirmed his death on Thursday, using dental records and fingerprints. His DNA was also tested for confirmation, according to one Israeli official and the White House.Mr. Sinwar’s death was the most severe blow to Hamas’s leadership after more than a year of escalating violence in the Middle East, and it immediately plunged the war in Gaza into a new and uncertain phase. It came less than three weeks after Israeli forces killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike south of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. More

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      Just Over the Border from Israel, a Hezbollah Cache of Explosives and Mines

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      Israel’s military showed journalists parts of what it said was Hezbollah’s deeply entrenched military infrastructure across the border in southern Lebanon.We had entered southern Lebanon early Sunday afternoon in a convoy of armored vehicles through a gap punched by Israeli forces in the snaking border wall.A rustic nature trail in a forest of thorny trees and thickets led to a small clearing. Here, in the western sector of southern Lebanon, about 300 yards north of the border with Israel, Israeli forces showed us what they described as a secret military outpost of Hezbollah’s, equipped with large amounts of explosives and mines.The outpost was the second of two sites that the Israeli military showed to international journalists during a supervised visit to the area, two weeks after Israel invaded southern Lebanon in pursuit of Hezbollah. The sites were in a sparsely populated, leafy mountainous area near the Mediterranean coast that it now controls.At the outpost, the Israelis had displayed the mines, as well as a metal chest marked “Explosive,” with English and Russian writing and numbers, containing ammunition. Boots, helmets, a solar panel charger and other gear were also on display. According to the military officials at the scene, the small dugout had room for about 10 fighters — an explosives team, they said, whose mission was to blow a gap in the concrete border wall.The stated aim of Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon was to degrade the military capabilities of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, and to push its fighters further north. Israel has not said how far into Lebanon its forces will advance or how long they will stay.Military officials on the ground said they were surprised at the extent of Hezbollah’s entrenchment in forward positions a short walk north of the border wall — evidence, they said, that Hezbollah had made meticulous preparations to carry out its long-threatened plan to invade northern Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Jets Pummel Hezbollah Targets in Southern Lebanon

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      Sirens sounded in northern Israel, warning of incoming fire from Hezbollah.Israel’s air force pounded targets in Lebanon as its soldiers clashed with Hezbollah militants in the southern part of the country, the military said on Sunday. Lebanon’s government said that at least 23 people had been killed over the past 24 hours.The Lebanese Red Cross said overnight that it was responding to a “major strike” in the southern city of Nabatieh, posting an image on social media that showed flames and rubble. Lebanon’s civil defense said on Sunday morning one person had been killed and four others wounded.The civil defense also said its teams had completed a search and rescue operation shortly before dawn after an attack a day earlier on the town of Al-Maaysra in the central Keserwan district. It said that 17 people — including two women and three children — had been killed and 12 others wounded. The Health Ministry listed a series of other attacks in which it said that at least six people had been killed and dozens of others injured since Saturday.On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that its jets had hit around “200 Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon and southern Lebanon” over the past day as part of its multipronged fight against the Iranian-backed militant group.Hezbollah started firing on northern Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks last year, setting off back-and-forth exchanges of fire that displaced communities on both sides of the border. Israel, which is also fighting in Gaza against Hamas, stepped up its bombardment in recent weeks before invading southern Lebanon with ground troops.The Israeli bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 2,000 people and caused significant destruction and forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee their homes. Aid agencies have warned it is compounding a humanitarian crisis prompted by the war in Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

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      The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.The documents, which were verified by The Times, lay out the main strategies and assessments of the leadership group:Hamas initially planned to carry out the attack, which it code-named “the big project,” in the fall of 2022. But the group delayed executing the plan as it tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to participate.As they prepared arguments aimed at Hezbollah, the Hamas leaders said that Israel’s “internal situation” — an apparent reference to turmoil over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary — was among the reasons they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle.”In July 2023, Hamas dispatched a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking sensitive sites at the start of the assault.The senior Iranian commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah were supportive in principle, but needed more time to prepare; the minutes do not say how detailed a plan was presented by Hamas to its allies.The documents also say that Hamas planned to discuss the attack in more detail at a subsequent meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader at the time, but do not clarify whether the discussion happened.Hamas felt assured of its allies’ general support, but concluded it might need to go ahead without their full involvement — in part to stop Israel from deploying an advanced new air-defense system before the assault took place.The decision to attack was also influenced by Hamas’s desire to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the entrenchment of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Israeli efforts to exert greater control over the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, sacred in both Islam and Judaism and known to Jews as the Temple Mount.Hamas deliberately avoided major confrontations with Israel for two years from 2021, in order to maximize the surprise of the Oct. 7 attack. As the leaders saw it, they “must keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm.”Hamas leaders in Gaza said they briefed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, on “the big project.” It was not previously known whether Mr. Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in July, had been briefed on the attack before it happened.Prelude to WarThe documents provide greater context to one of the most pivotal moments in modern Middle Eastern history, showing it was both the culmination of a yearslong plan, as well as a move partly shaped by specific events after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power in Israel in late 2022.Yahya Sinwar in April 2023 in Gaza City. Documents show that he and other Hamas leaders wanted time to lull Israeli leaders into a false sense of security before attacking Israel. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump marks 7 October anniversary and criticizes ‘weak’ Biden and Harris

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      Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks, which he called “one of the darkest days in all of history”, with a commemoration for victims and hostages at his golf resort in Miami on Monday night, but swiftly turned the event into an attack on Kamala Harris.He also repeated a previous claim that the attack on Israel would never have happened if he was still in the White House.Blaming Harris and Joe Biden for the “weakness” he said gave Hamas the confidence to launch the attack, the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd of about 300 supporters, mostly from the Jewish community, that a wave of anti-Israel sentiment which he said was sweeping the US, and wider world, could be blamed on their administration.“Almost as shocking as 7 October itself is the outbreak of antisemitism that we have all seen in its wake,” he said.“The anti-Jewish hatred has returned … and within the ranks of the Democratic party in particular. The Republican party has not been infected by this horrible disease, and won’t be as long as I’m in charge.”The attacks, which left 1,200 people dead and an additional 250 taken hostage by Hamas, provided “a moment in horrible history”, he said.“It seemed as if the gates of hell had sprung open and unleashed their horrors unto the world. We never thought we’d see it … and a lot of that has to do with leadership of this country.”After claiming the attacks would not have taken place had he been elected to a second term, Trump said he would restore the closeness with Israel he insisted the US had lost, despite Biden and Harris both expressing support for the country’s right to defend itself.“If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was. But we have to win the election,” he said.“What is needed is more than ever unwavering American leadership. The dawn of new, more harmonious Middle East is finally within our reach. I will not allow the Jewish state to be threatened with destruction. I will not allow another Holocaust of the Jewish people. I will not allow a jihad to be waged on America or our allies, and I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”Trump’s fire and brimstone delivery was at odds with remarks earlier in the day from Harris, his Democratic opponent in November, who paid tribute to those who lost their lives, but also spoke of ensuring Israel had what it needed to defend itself.Biden expressed sorrow for suffering on all sides of the conflict in the Middle East, and in a statement condemned a “vicious surge in antisemitism in America” since the attacks.Trump’s address began more than two hours later than billed. He joked about a bumpy flight from New York, and his concern for Florida from Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm predicted to slam into the state on Wednesday.His supporters, some wearing yarmulkes with the former president’s name embroidered on them, cheered as he took the stage of the ballroom at Trump National in Doral.He spoke against a backdrop of six American and Israeli flags, and images of the almost 1,200 victims, including 46 Americans, killed by Hamas one year ago. A succession of speakers and guests, including two Holocaust survivors, Jewish religious leaders and Republican politicians, lit remembrance candles as they took the stage.Along one wall, rows of candles sat in front of photographs of the dozens of people taken hostage. Each name was marked by the word “kidnapped” in capital letters.View image in fullscreenTrump has presented himself as Israel’s strongest, most outspoken defender, but has also drawn criticism for his previous comments. A year ago, in the days following the terrorist attack on the Nova music festival, he called Hezbollah, the Lebanese group closely allied to Hamas, “very smart”, and Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant “a jerk”.Speaking at an event in Florida last October, Trump said Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not prepared, and that Israel’s enemies were “smart, and, boy, are they vicious”.The White House condemned his comments as “dangerous and unhinged”.Trump also raised eyebrows last month when he claimed he was “the most popular person in Israel”, and bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters after polls showed him below 40% with them.Insisting he had been “the best president by far” for Israel, he said: “Based on what I did … I should be at 100%.” Trump did not repeat the boast on Monday.Some supporters in the audience in Miami were pleased to hear Trump speaking forcefully in defense of Israel.“Kamala Harris will stand for Hamas. She is no friend of Israel,” Ben Fisher, a Miami resident, said. “Donald Trump speaks the way a strong leader should. He knows if your country is attacked you cannot let that go, if it’s the attack on the festival or the missiles from Tehran.”Harris spoke earlier in the day at the vice-presidential residence, promising that if elected next month she would “always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself”.Unlike Trump, she resisted the opportunity to make political remarks, focusing instead on victims by telling the story of two Americans who died, and naming each of the seven Americans taken by Hamas to Gaza, four of whom are still believed to be alive. More

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      Athens Democracy Forum: Seeking the Road to Peace in the Middle East

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      Panelists at the Athens Democracy Forum discussed the widening conflict and the challenge of getting the warring parties to a consensus.This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which gathered experts last week in the Greek capital to discuss global issues.As the war in the Middle East faced another round of deadly escalation, the international negotiator Nomi Bar-Yaacov called on all sides in the conflict to stop and consider how “we got here.”An Israeli citizen and associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, she didn’t hesitate to give her own answer.“At the heart of this lies the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to statehood,” Ms. Bar-Yaacov said, leading off a sometimes-edgy 40-minute panel discussion on the Middle East at the Athens Democracy Forum last week.In recent days, the heightened confrontation between Israel and Iran has exacerbated fears in the region and globally about an even larger and more dangerous conflict.And yet, the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was what started the current war, just as it has other Middle East wars before it. And most of the panelists agreed that the most feasible path to peace would be the two-state solution that has been on and off the table since Israel was created.“Nobody in 76 years has come up with a better idea,” said Roger Cohen, Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, who has reported frequently from the region.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More