Sinwar might be gone, but Israel’s mission is far from over

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

In his final minutes, sitting slumped and wounded in a chair, Yahya Sinwar — the man who masterminded the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust — seemingly threw a stick or object toward an Israeli drone monitoring him.

Was it defiance or fatalism? Everyone seems to be drawing different conclusions. But soon after, the Hamas leader was delivered a coup de grâce by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as the wrecked building he was in was struck by two 120-millimeter tank shells.

“This is a clear message to all of our enemies — the IDF will reach anyone who attempts to harm the citizens of Israel or our security forces, and we will bring you to justice,” announced Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “Evil has suffered a heavy blow,” adding that Israel had now “settled its account” with Sinwar.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, after congratulating Israel on eliminating Sinwar, U.S. President Joe Biden framed the Hamas leader’s death as “an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.” “Time to move on,” he said.

But is this really the end of the story?

Not for Bibi. The account might be settled with Sinwar, the debt paid — but the story is far from over. The war is far from over. For him, it’s just the “beginning of the end.”

Simply put, Bibi now wants to recast the Middle East. And those who know him say Sinwar’s death, as well as the assassinations of a host of Hamas and Hezbollah commanders and leaders — including Lebanese cleric Hassan Nasrallah — are just way stations in a campaign to secure Israel’s safety for a generation, to redeem himself after the blame he’s received for the Oct. 7 attacks, and to stay in power.

Former Netanyahu election adviser Nadav Shtrauchler agrees: The mission is far from accomplished, he told POLITICO.

The most immediate issue, of course, is to first secure the release of the Israeli captives still being held in Gaza, he said — and Sinwar’s death might not make that any easier. “Who will Bibi or Israel and our allies negotiate with now?”

And aside from the complexity of that, Netanyahu’s military aims have become hugely ambitious as well. Biden may want to declare peace in our time ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 to boost Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, but that timetable just doesn’t fit Netanyahu’s.

“If this had happened half a year ago, it would be a different story,” Shtrauchler said. “But now there’s a much bigger picture — Iran. After eliminating Nasrallah, and eliminating Sinwar, he’s aiming for the big goal. I think he made a huge shift in the last few weeks or so … to a new narrative. He’s looking for Iran right now, and there’s still that debt to pay.”

And the road to that destination — humbling Tehran, or even toppling the clerical regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — runs through Lebanon.

But while Hezbollah — Iran’s most important ally in the so-called axis of resistance — may be rocked back on its heels by Israel scything through its upper leadership,  disoriented and diminished, it still has a sting in its tail. It demonstrated this with its Oct. 13 drone attack, which killed four Israeli soldiers at a military compound south of Haifa — the largest single death toll Hezbollah has inflicted on Israeli soil since Netanyahu ordered the military incursion into Lebanon at the start of the month.

Plus, even die-hard Netanyahu critics don’t take issue with taking the fight to Hezbollah. While IDF and Israel’s security agency Shin Bet scrambled to match Sinwar’s DNA and dental records to his corpse, POLITICO was able to sit down with Ya’akov Peri, a former Shin Bet chief and former Knesset lawmaker. Peri has long bewailed Netanyahu’s strategy, and he blames the Israeli leader — along with right-wing settlers — for sabotaging the Oslo Accords, which fell apart fell apart with the 1995 assassination of then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“Rabin was the closest prime minister to getting a peace settlement in the Middle East. He hated the settlers — really hated them. And he was ready to settle with Abu Mazen [PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas], though he didn’t like him. He understood that’s the only solution for Israel’s future,” Peri said.

But Netanyahu had no choice but to launch the Lebanon campaign, he added. “Hezbollah had everything ready to pull off the same kind of action as Oct. 7. I cannot say that I’m against the Lebanon incursion. It is a necessity,” he said. “We understand that the world doesn’t like it. And the world will not be sympathetic to Israel when we’re killing children and civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. But we haven’t got a choice. If we want to stay alive in Israel, we have to.”

And yet, for all of that, he still harbors no doubt that Netanyahu is prolonging the conflict “for personal political considerations.”

“Netanyahu’s interested in war lasting for as long as possible, so it leaves him in his seat,” he said. “Bibi is chained to two ministers in his coalition government who dream of rebuilding the temple of the kings of Judea …  It is unbelievable. It is Messianic. And they are menacing every time there’s a chance of a deal to release the hostages, a deal with the Palestinians and the opportunity for compromise,” he added.

Above all, however, Peri lamented the lack of thought given to an overall strategy, which is being crowded out by a relentless focus on tactics, and he criticized Netanyahu for not having day-after plans. Discussing the groundbreaking 2012 documentary “The Gatekeepers” — which chronicled Shin Bet, featuring interviews with six of its former heads, including Peri — he reiterated the one clear message all the former chiefs conveyed: Israel must come to a political settlement with Palestinians.

“We’re all the same,” he said. “I served for 32 years in the service. I still think the biggest error of Israel is not reaching a deal with the Palestinians. It’s the biggest error, the biggest failure of the Israelis.” Netanyahu’s just compounding the error, repeating the same mistake his predecessors made — a mistake Rabin tried to correct, costing him his life.

But with half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank and a government lurching toward the right — as it always does after suffering trauma — is it possible to start seriously negotiating a settlement? “If we have internal strife among ourselves, even physical conflict between Israelis, Israel will still survive. It will survive that and that’s the point. [But] anyone who cares about the future of Israel has to understand that without solving the Palestinian issue, Israel won’t survive,” he stressed.

The story is far from over.