Israel-Gaza War (2023- )

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      Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive

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      The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be ready to declare victory and move on, while a demoralized Hamas might show greater flexibility in cease-fire talks.Or, at least, that outcome would most likely be welcomed by most of the countries. Despite their pledges to keep on fighting, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies may also be looking for offramps, analysts say, even if Israel seems not to be displaying much appetite for taking the win.“All of them are super eager for offramps. They have been from the start,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group, speaking of the Arab nations. “It’s a difficult situation for the entire region. And there are many ways in which this could get much worse.”Egypt and Jordan, just next door to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, have called repeatedly for a cease-fire. Beyond their people’s anguish over civilian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, they are anxious to end the instability rocking the region and halt the damage to their economies.Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, recently warned that Egypt would have to transition to what he called a “war economy” if increasing regional instability threatens critical sources of Egyptian revenue, including tourism and shipping through the Suez Canal. Traffic through the canal has dropped by about half over the past year as Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is retaliation for Israel’s assault on Gaza.The Gulf Arab monarchies have also pushed for calm. Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, as well as Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, all discussed working toward an end to the conflict in calls on Thursday with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Not only is a safe environment good for business, but the Gulf States also recognize that their ambitious national development plans cannot succeed in a region embroiled in constant conflict, especially one involving their neighbor, Iran.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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      Sinwar’s Final Moments: On the Run, Hurt, Alone, but Still Defiant

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      Israeli forces had been steadily closing in on Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, for weeks before he was cornered and killed in a ruined house in the Gaza Strip.At the end, the fearsome militant leader who had helped unleash a vicious war seemed barely a threat.In video captured by an Israeli drone, a man sat alone, badly wounded and caked in dust amid the ruins of a building in the Gaza Strip, wrapped in a kaffiyeh and staring directly into the camera. The man, Israeli officials say, was Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas.The stare-down lasted some 20 seconds, then the man limply but defiantly hurled a broken piece of wood toward the drone. Not long afterward, officials say, an Israeli soldier shot him in the head, and a tank shell flattened part of the building.So ended the long hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men. It began hours after the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that Mr. Sinwar helped orchestrate, and concluded amid the destruction of a Rafah neighborhood resembling so many parts of Gaza, leveled by the Israeli military in the year since.The manhunt involved Israeli commandos and spies, as well as a special unit established inside the headquarters of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, and at the Central Intelligence Agency. It used a sophisticated electronic surveillance dragnet and ground-penetrating radar provided by the United States.New details about Mr. Sinwar’s movements over the past year have emerged since his death, including the fact that Israeli intelligence officers had seen mounting evidence since August that Mr. Sinwar, or possibly other top Hamas leaders, might be in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.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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      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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      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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      Egypt Replaces Its Powerful Spy Chief

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      Gen. Abbas Kamel, a longtime confidant of Egypt’s president, oversaw the country’s most important international relationships and helped maintain the president’s authoritarian grip.President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt replaced the powerful head of the country’s intelligence services on Wednesday, according to state media, switching out the Egyptian official who plays a leading role in cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.The official, Gen. Abbas Kamel, had overseen many of Egypt’s most important domestic and foreign policy matters, becoming the face of its extensive security apparatus, which has overseen crackdowns on political opponents and kept Mr. el-Sisi firmly in control. The spy chief’s power often appeared to be second only to the president’s.The reasons for the move were unclear, and the longstanding secrecy surrounding the highest levels of Egypt’s government means that Mr. el-Sisi’s decision is likely to go unexplained. But it came as Egypt is rocked by the regional instability set off by the nearby war in Gaza, which is damaging Egypt’s already struggling economy and putting intense pressure on its peace treaty with Israel as well as on its relationships with Hamas and the United States.State media and the presidency’s statement said only that General Kamel was replaced by Maj. Gen. Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, who, according to the state-linked Extra News channel, had served as a deputy to the departing intelligence chief. General Kamel was named a special envoy and adviser to the president and general coordinator of the security services, according to the statement.It was not immediately clear whether this was a promotion or a demotion for General Kamel or whether he would continue to play a role in the talks between Israel and Hamas.Working closely with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director; David Barnea, the head of Israel’s spy service; and Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, General Kamel had become a key mediator in the negotiations over the past year to end the conflict. He also helped broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in May 2021.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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      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