Word – Israel Vows It Is Prepared for Retaliatory Attacks From Iran and Hezbollah: Live Updates
Palestinians in Gaza were apprehensive about Hamas’s decision on Tuesday to name Yahya Sinwar, one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, to lead its political wing, fearing that a cease-fire deal — and an end to their suffering — would be even further away.
Ordinary Gazans have borne the brunt of 10 months of Israeli bombardment and ground fighting that have killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to health officials, and left hundreds of thousands of others struggling to find food, water and shelter. For that, many Gazans blame Mr. Sinwar, the influential leader of Hamas in Gaza.
His appointment to replace Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed last week in an assassination in Iran widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, cements his influence over the armed group and shows that Hamas remains unwavering in its hard-line position.
“I thought that after they killed Haniyeh, they had already achieved their goal and that we were closer to the end of the war,” said Nisreen Sabouh, a 37-year-old displaced mother of four.
“But now, with Sinwar taking over, I don’t believe this will bring the negotiations to a better place,” she said, adding that Mr. Sinwar, who remains the head of Hamas in Gaza, “is tough and everyone knows that.”
The situation in Gaza has continued to worsen as Israeli troops have in recent weeks been returning to parts of Gaza where they said Hamas had regrouped. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, has expressed little appetite for compromise, insisting last month on further concessions from Hamas in negotiations.
The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of parts of the northern town of Beit Hanoun on Wednesday, the latest in a series of recent directives that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again amid ongoing airstrikes and shelling.
Against that backdrop, the change in the leadership of the group that had governed them — often oppressively — was one of the many things some people said they no longer had the luxury to worry about.
“I don’t care who Hamas chooses to lead the movement inside or outside,” said Safaa Oda, a 39-year-old cartoonist from the southern city of Rafah who was displaced to a tent in Khan Younis.
“What we need is a cease-fire,” she said, adding that she believes that Sinwar’s appointment will make the situation in Gaza “worse than ever before.”
Mr. Sinwar, who is believed to be hiding out in tunnels deep beneath Gaza, has been widely seen as trying to keep Hamas’s focus more on military power than on running a civilian government. Hamas leaders have said they want to ignite a permanent state of war with Israel on all fronts as a way to revive the Palestinian cause.
Husam al-Khateeb, a 45-year-old technician at a local radio station from Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, described Mr. Sinwar as “the most obstinate man I have ever seen.”
Mr. Sinwar was “willing to do anything for the sake of the movement’s survival,” he said. A solution to the conflict and an end to the war would not come from Mr. Sinwar or from inside Gaza, he said, but from Iran and its proxies and the United States.
Ibtihal Shurrab, 29, from Khan Younis, noted the widespread thinking that Mr. Haniyeh was more of a figurehead, while Mr. Sinwar “has the first and last word in everything.”
“It is a scary situation that we live in,” she said. “I hope Sinwar can be the one to end the war, the way he was the one who started it.”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London.
