Most leaders see the protection of their citizens as paramount. Not so Yahya Sinwar, who saw leveraging the pain of the Palestinian people as a way to gain further international support for Hamas, the terrorist organization he ran. And, sad to say, he had a great deal of success on American campuses and beyond in his goal of fracturing, isolating and oppressing the Jewish diaspora.
But now, according to Israel and independent news sources, Sinwar is dead, killed by Israeli forces who encountered him in Gaza.
Forgive us if we don’t send flowers.
Sinwar is widely presumed to be the chief architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel, images of which are seared forever on our minds and that became a catalyst for more than a year of intensified human suffering in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Israel itself.
With Sinwar dies a living, breathing impediment to a Middle East peace process that however you shake it, whatever religion you believe, regardless of your politics, no matter how you view the history, has to end up with diverse, imperfect people living in peace alongside each other in one of the most bounteous regions on our shared planet.
His death offers such a golden opportunity for an improvement to the Middle East horror show that it is enough to wish the United States were not distracted by a pending election.
But President Joe Biden is not on the ballot and if he wants to go out burnishing his legacy, as all leaders do, this is his October surprise.
And his immediate opportunity. No time to waste. Rev up Air Force One. Maximize U.S. influence. Pick up the crucial Egyptians on the way. Have the Qataris ride shotgun.
There are Israeli hostages, after all, and this situation will not improve until they come home. As of today, their families have yet more cause to worry. But also to hope.
One man’s death doesn’t change years of enmity, of course. But it’s also true that epic peace processes never are divorced from individuals.
Even if you allow that he was under extreme pressure from Palestinian extremists, and that he lost a crucial partner with the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat could have achieved a lasting peace as part of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, instead of the sadly limited results the Middle East actually got. As Bill and Hillary Clinton have observed many times over the last few months, and they were there, much of it came down to Arafat alone. The process fell apart due to his personal inability to morph from military-style freedom fighter to besuited diplomatic peacemaker. Arafat eventually retreated back into the old ways, and uncompromising extremists on both sides then got the mutual hatred they wanted.
Oct. 7 was a child of that failing.
Sinwar was no friend to peace or to the Palestinian people who have watched their communities turned into rubble and the futures of their children blown to pieces. Can you lay blame entirely at Sinwar’s door? Of course not. Extremists exist on all sides, the theocrats remain in power in Iran, and there is not much talking to those guys about compromise and tolerance.
But Sinwar ran Hamas, and Hamas ran Gaza, which we all must hope moves in a wholly different direction. For we now know that Hamas had every intention from the get-go of making this as broad a war as possible with the biggest chance of destroying the Jewish state. We now know Sinwar and Co. got on the horn in 2023 to Iran and Hezbollah and whomever else he thought could help Hamas beef up their war.
Now, a door to peace has been opened.
What should the U.S. do? Shove it open yet wider.
The short-term goals are self-evident: a release of the remaining Israeli hostages still held in Gaza and at least a substantial withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and an end to the killings and woundings of the Palestinian people. Even though it has been fighting wars on multiple fronts, Israel has achieved an astonishing sequence of military accomplishments over this last month, but this is no time for celebration. That beleaguered nation now has to use one of those very achievements to show the world it has a plan beyond the effective disabling and eliminating of its enemies.
Ideally, of course, that cease-fire also extends to Lebanon and means that Israelis who live near that border can return safely and permanently to their homes. Ideally, it means a lot of things, but longtime observers of that region have learned to keep their expectations in check.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hardly has been a friend to peace. At least in private, few would say that, even in Israel. And while he has support, there also are plenty of Israelis who believe he, too, has to be out of power before there can be any real and lasting improvement.
Perhaps. But Israel has a democratic process that could make that happen, if its citizens wish. In the meantime, Netanyahu, too, has an opportunity now to go down in history as something other than a ruthless hard-liner, or at least to be better able to stare the families of the Israeli hostages in the face and say, just maybe, he brought their loved ones home on the back of a courageous agreement. Even if his government initially failed to protect them.
Few of us would wish our death to be celebrated or wish our sudden absence to be viewed as an opportunity for a brighter future, not just for our enemies but even for the people we thought we served.
But that is the situation here.
The world is far better without the living presence of Yahya Sinwar, as ruthless a killer as this young century has seen.
Editor’s note: Tribune endorsements in the 2024 general election continue on Sunday.
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