Yahya Sinwar’s killing on Thursday forces Hamas to make a choice of far-reaching consequences: picking a leader at arguably its weakest moment since Israel’s assassination of its founder in 2004.
The survival of Sinwar, who led the militant group in Gaza for about seven years, had symbolised Hamas’s resistance under Israeli fire. With the architect of the October 7 attack at large, Israel could not claim victory.
Now his assassination has left Hamas without a figurehead who was steeped in its militant operations as well as its politics. Sinwar “is going to leave a big vacuum”, said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gazan political scientist now at Northwestern University.
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