JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas confirmed Friday that its leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and reiterated its stance that hostages the militant group took from Israel a year ago will not be released until there is a cease-fire in Gaza and a withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The group’s staunch position pushed back against a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin a day earlier that his country’s military will keep fighting until the hostages are released and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.
The stands taken by the two sides signal, at least publicly, that they have not moved any closer to ending their conflict, even as President Joe Biden and other world leaders press the case that Sinwar’s killing is a turning point that should be used to unlock stalled cease-fire negotiations.
Khalil al-Hayya, who was Sinwar’s Qatar-based deputy and represented Hamas during several rounds of cease-fire negotiations, said the former Hamas leader died “confronting the occupation army until the last moment of his life.” Hamas will not return any of the hostages, he said, “before the end of the aggression on Gaza and the withdrawal from Gaza.”
Hamas heralded Sinwar in a statement, calling him a hero for “not retreating, brandishing his weapon, engaging and confronting the occupation army at the forefront of the ranks.”
The statement appeared to refer to a video the Israeli military circulated of Sinwar’s apparent last moments in which a man sits on a chair in severely damaged building, badly wounded and covered in dust. In the video, the man raises his hand and flings a stick at an approaching Israeli drone.
Sinwar was the chief architect of the Hamas raid on Israel last year that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children.
The war has destroyed vast swaths of Gaza, displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people and has left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
Sinwar’s killing appeared to be a chance front-line encounter with Israeli troops on Wednesday, and it could shift the dynamics of the Gaza war even as Israel presses its offensive against Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other areas of the country.
Hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel nearly every day since the Israel-Hamas war began, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the country’s north. Roughly 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground offensive.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, which hailed Sinwar as a martyr who can inspire others in challenging Israel.
“We, and countless others around the world, salute his selfless struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote on the X social media platform. “Martyrs live forever, and the cause for liberation of Palestine from occupation is more alive than ever.”
Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas politically in Gaza, and killing Sinwar was a top military priority. Photos which were apparently taken by Israeli troops on the scene showed the body of a man who appeared to be him, half-buried in rubble and with a gaping wound in his head.
Netanyahu said in a speech announcing the killing Thursday night that “our war is not yet ended.”
But many, from the governments of Israel’s allies to exhausted residents of Gaza, expressed hope that Sinwar’s death would pave the way for an end to the war.
