Reports on Sunday indicated that Mohammed Sinwar may have been killed by an IDF airstrike last week. Al-Hadath reported that his body, along with a number of his assistants and another Hamas commander, was found in Gaza.
The IDF did not initially comment. However, the targeting of Sinwar once again raises the question of why more is not being done to replace Hamas and provide Gazans with an alternative to this terrorist group.
When the October 7 massacre happened, Israeli officials compared Hamas to ISIS. There were claims that when the war ends, “Hamas will be gone from Gaza.”
This goal has shifted a bit over time with claims of achieving “total victory” and eroding Hamas’s “military and governance capabilities.”
However, the latter goal leaves Hamas in power. Israel has fought for 19 months in one of its worst, most grueling wars in history, and yet the objective is still unclear.
The opportunity exists in Gaza to replace Hamas. Most Hamas leaders who were alive on October 7 in Gaza are now deceased. Hamas company, battalion, and brigade commanders have almost all been killed.
In some cases, they have been killed, replaced, and then the replacement was also killed. This means Hamas has had a chance often to fill holes in its ranks. However, each time it has filled them, it has usually had to put in place men with less experience. Hamas’s leadership is devastated.
Usually, in war, when all the commanders are dead, the military will not function well. Terrorist groups are also susceptible to this. Groups cannot function when all their leaders have been killed.
In many cases in war, a unit will cease to function when it suffers twenty to fifty percent casualties. Hamas units have been decimated.
According to reports, it would appear many of the Hamas “battalions” that existed on October 7 have suffered over fifty percent casualties and lost almost all of their commanders.
When Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed, there was no other priority but to exploit his death to rapidly move to enable Hamas to be replaced.
Instead, the IDF’s campaign has mostly proceeded at a slow pace, very systematically and methodically, without any attempt to take advantage of changing conditions on the battlefield or changes in Hamas leadership.
THIS CAMPAIGN is often waged as if Hamas is not actually present on the other side. What this means is that the enemy appears to be quantified into a system, with not much thought given to “what do we do when Hamas’s leaders are killed?”
The same lack of imagination seems to have underpinned planning before October 7. A new report at The Wall Street Journal indicates that Hamas wanted to derail Israel’s normalization ties with Saudi Arabia.
This was a clear goal of Iran and Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. This was well-known before October 7.
What remained unexplained was how, exactly, did they plan on achieving this. Hamas was the “how.”
Yet very little thought was given to bolstering the Gaza border defenses. Instead, the border was stripped of soldiers, and it was treated almost like a peace border.
No clear process in place to replace Hamas
Today, the problem persists. There is no clear process in place to replace Hamas. There has been no attempt to even replace it on the local level when protests occur, such as in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.
Unlike in previous successful wars against regimes such as the Nazis, where the war ended with them being replaced by non-Nazi civilian leadership, there has been no attempt to bring forward civilian leadership in Gaza.
Israel’s leaders say they do not want the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. They also claim they do not want Hamas governing. However, the result has been to leave a power vacuum that Hamas simply continues to fill.
The death of Mohammed Sinwar could enable another chance to replace Hamas. Replacing it would also mean bringing the hostages home.
Gulf states, such as the UAE, appear to want Hamas replaced. The current “Gideon’s Chariots” operation envisions Israel moving many Gazans to southern Gaza and a new US-backed humanitarian initiative taking shape.
However, there is no corollary to the plan where Gazans get to have non-Hamas leaders. There’s no vision in place to exploit the weakness of Hamas to finally get rid of it.
In the past, Hamas leaders have been killed and replaced. However, never in the past 40 years has Hamas had so many leaders and commanders killed.
If the goal was ever to replace Hamas, now would be the time. Leaving it weakened will mean it returns to fill the vacuum in Gaza.