People are reflected in a window with a poster of then newly appointed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Palestinian Bourj al-Barajneh camp on August 8, 2024 in Beirut, Lebanon.

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People are reflected in a window with a poster of then newly appointed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Palestinian Bourj al-Barajneh camp on August 8, 2024 in Beirut, Lebanon.

Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the man believed to be behind the October 7 attacks on Israel, is dead.

Israeli officials announced Thursday that he had been killed by the army in Gaza. Sinwar was Israel’s number one and most wanted man in Gaza.

Reporting live from Tel Aviv earlier today, NPR’s Daniel Estrin explained the situation in more depth:

“He was in charge of this war, he approved an agreement to release hostages in November, and he was the man Israel hoped would approve a ceasefire agreement, Israel and many around the world world. He was the man.”

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Sinwar’s legacy

Since the start of the war, Sinwar had escaped capture, possibly in the labyrinth of tunnels that Hamas had built under Gaza. He was seen as a hardliner within Hamas and was considered less likely to reach a ceasefire with Israel.

David Remnick profiled the Hamas leader in the The New Yorker earlier this year. He spoke to NPR about Sinwar’s ideology – laid out in a semi-autobiographical novel that Sinwar wrote while in an Israeli prison.

“It certainly has nothing to do with the two-state solution. It is fueled by the absolute conviction that there can be no Israeli state, and that no compromise is possible,” Remnick said.

Israel killed both Sinwar’s predecessor and the head of Hamas’s military wing, leaving Sinwar as the militant group’s leading figure.

A look at the future

In a statement released Thursday, President Biden called the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar “a good day for Israel, for the United States and for the world.”
To explain the larger implications of Sinwar’s death for Hamas, the region and the war with Israel: All things taken into consideration Host Juana Summers spoke with Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank.

“It’s a victory (for Israel),” Byman said. “They have promoted the idea that he is a dead man since the war began. And Israeli leaders can say to their own people, ‘We have now killed the main architect of October 7 for Hamas.’ He was a hardliner. And if he is replaced by someone more pragmatic or moderate, it could also lead to Hamas being more likely to compromise. But in the past, the assassinations of major leaders have not led to progress on the issue of the ceasefire And both sides now seem quite entrenched.”

Sinwar’s death comes weeks after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was also killed by Israel. So what could be the next step for the militant groups now that several prominent leaders have been killed?

“It is unclear who will be the next leader of Hamas,” Byman said.

“Israel has taken away much of the leadership, making it difficult to determine what the natural succession is. So it becomes a real challenge for Hamas to be able to have a leader who has credibility within the movement and from there the credibility to be able to make major concessions and otherwise try to move beyond the current conflict.

But a ceasefire still seems a distant possibility.

“Making a big leap, such as a ceasefire, that would endanger (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s) political coalition. That leaves an uncertain question about the domestic investigation into the October 7 attack in Israel. That would be a big leap. And so far at least, he’s been very reluctant to do that.”

This episode was produced by Marc Rivers and Erika Ryan. It was edited by Jeanette Woods, Timbete Ermyas and James Hider. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.