Police have confirmed the body of an employee who died at a Walmart in Halifax over the weekend was found in a walk-in oven.
For Biden, Sinwar's death injects uncertainty β but also an opening β into resolving Gaza conflict
For months, frustrated American officials looking to end the war in Gaza have mused quietly about the one scenario they believed could loosen deadlocked ceasefire talks: the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed to be hiding deep underneath Gaza in the groupβs network of tunnels.
Whether that is what transpires over the coming days remains an open question. Without his singular operational control, the groupβs constellation of commanders, believed to be holding dozens of Israeli hostages in the Hamas tunnels, could be left to their own devices and adopt a new approach.
Yet inside the White House and aboard Air Force One, where Biden first learned of Sinwarβs death, optimism abounded that a new phase had opened in the year-long conflict.
βHis removal from the battlefield does present an opportunity to find a way forward that gets the hostages home, brings the war to an end and brings us to a day after,β US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said aboard the presidential aircraft, which was ferrying the president to meetings in Berlin.
βThatβs something weβre going to have to talk about with our Israeli counterparts,β he said, noting Biden planned to speak shortly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. βOf course, there are still other Hamas actors who need to be brought to justice, and there are hostages, including Americans, being held by terrorists. Weβre gonna have to deal with all of that, but we believe there is a renewed opportunity right now that we would like to seize.β
How to strike a hostage and ceasefire deal, and with whom, was still a matter of uncertainty for American officials, who spent the hours after Sinwarβs death trying to determine if he had a successor.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in August that βthe fate of the dealβ β speaking to the ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas β was in Sinwarβs hands. But US officials stopped short of saying Thursday that his death will result in a deal overnight.
βWe donβt know what this means yet,β said one US official, adding there could be βrapidβ movement towards a ceasefire and hostage deal or βthere could still be a long path ahead.β
βIt would help a lot to make that realistic,β a second senior US official said, referring to Sinwarβs death.
For all the unknowns, the moment was viewed inside the White House and across the Biden administration as a momentous one.
βThere is now the opportunity for a βday afterβ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike,β Biden said in a statement drafted aboard Air Force One and sent several hours after Sinwarβs death was confirmed. βYahya Sinwar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals. That obstacle no longer exists. But much work remains before us.β
Sinwarβs killing is, perhaps more than anything else, the singular event many US officials have pointed to as the biggest potential game-changer in the Israel-Hamas war. Coming weeks ahead of the American presidential election, the death has the potential to transform a conflict that long ago became a drag on President Joe Bidenβs political fortunes, and by extension Vice President Kamala Harrisβ campaign.
Even with Sinwarβs death, there is virtually no expectation the wider Middle East conflict will be resolved before Election Day, particularly as Israel against Iranβs ballistic missile attack earlier this month. For many voters, negative views of the conflict have hardened after a year of fighting. Yet any development that could allow for a lowering of the regional temperatures would be welcome, both inside the White House and at Harrisβ campaign headquarters.
βThis moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza,β Harris said during a campaign stop in Milwaukee.
With progress towards a ceasefire-for-hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior administration officials had hung onto hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out β opening doors in the talks that simply would not be available otherwise.
βIt all comes down to Sinwar,β is how one senior administration official had bluntly put it earlier this year as ceasefire talks had stalled.
Netanyahu vowed to go after Sinwar
To be sure, Netanyahu had put up his own series of roadblocks to a hostage deal, generating immense frustrations inside the White House. But the Israeli leader had stated publicly his intentions go after Sinwar until his death. Simply put, US officials have looked at Sinwar as the scalp that Israel needed most to be able to declare they are done with the Hamas war.
βSinwarβs death would provide a renewed opening for President Biden to again push for the first phase of the ceasefire deal to be implemented and it would increase pressure on Netanyahu to do so,β said Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence analyst specializing in the region. βFor months, Israel has highlighted that Sinwar is the sticking point, that he doesnβt want a deal, and keeps changing prisoner demands in exchange for hostages. But at the same time, there has been significant chatter that much of Hamas is exhausted and would welcome a respite.β
βWhether a deal could be struck for a cessation of hostilities will depend on the new leader, but at minimum it provides space and an opportunity that hasnβt existed for a few a few months now,β Panikoff said.
The ongoing military conflict between Hezbollah and Israel complicates any potential opportunity for bringing the sprawling conflict to an end, one US official said. The US has been sharing intelligence with Israel regularly to try and identify Sinwarβs whereabouts, but itβs not clear any of that intelligence contributed to this specific operation.
βThe IDF is more surprised by this than we are,β the official said, noting that Israelis have told them that this was not an operation that they had been carrying out specifically to target Sinwar.
Increasingly over the past several months, American assessments found Sinwar to be dug in, fatalistic about his chances of survival and determined to continue bogging down Israel in a military conflict that has damaged its international reputation.
That mindset had only hardened as the Gaza war reached its one-year mark earlier this month, leaving American officials doubtful Sinwar would ever agree to a hostage and ceasefire deal.
With his death, the path forward isnβt immediately clear.
βThis is a big rock dropped in a lake and the ripples are quite extraordinary,β said Aaron David Miller, a seasoned Middle East negotiator who worked for multiple American administrations, adding: βWill this provide the kind of political explanation and justification for Benjamin Netanyahu to seriously consider to cooperate in a way to try to deescalate and ultimately end the war in Gaza? These questions are unanswerable right now, but the ripples are quite clear.β
Questions about who will replace Sinwar
Among the questions American officials are now searching for answers is who will make military decisions for Hamas. Sinwar had issued orders for his commanders to kill their hostages if under siege by Israeli forces, a dictate that it wasnβt clear would be extended.
βIf in fact you are now talking about a negotiation, if there is a Palestinian negotiator on the Hamas side who now understands that negotiations are the only way out of this, if the organization is going to survive in some form, you may have an opening. But you have inertia and you have the need to continue to look for hostages,β said Miller. βI donβt think the Israeli government position is immediately going to default into βLetβs stop shooting and now letβs start talking.ββ
Sinwar had long lived a deeply isolated existence, often making it difficult for Qatari and Egyptian mediators to reach him as they worked to broker a ceasefire deal.
US officials believed he no longer used electric communication devices and relied on human sources to convey and receive information. For long stretches, American officials couldnβt even say definitively whether he was alive or dead.
βBy all accounts, Sinwar has been the biggest obstacle within Hamas to a ceasefire-hostage release deal in Gaza. Depending on who would take his place, Sinwarβs death could revive hope for an agreement to end the war. Of course, that assumes Netanyahu is prepared to make a deal while his coalition openly talks about reestablishing Israeli settlements in the territory,β said Andrew Miller, a former senior State Department official working on Middle East issues.
Biden, in conversations with his Israeli counterpart, had tried to encourage an end to the war in Gaza that didnβt preclude operations to find and kill Sinwar.
βThereβs a lot of things that, in retrospect, I wish I had been able to convince the Israelis to do,β Biden said at a news conference in July. βBut the bottom line is we have a chance now. Itβs time to end this war. It doesnβt mean walk away from going after Sinwar and Hamas.β
Yet while operations in Gaza slowed as Israeli turned its focus to its northern front with Hezbollah in Lebanon, its deadly onslaught of airstrikes continued, causing the civilian death toll to rise. As the US election nears, the administration has begun applying new pressure on Israel to improve humanitarian conditions inside Gaza, which have worsened significantly over the past weeks.
In a revealed this week, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel that a failure to deliver more aid to the enclave could trigger a cutoff of military assistance.
How the conflict unfolds in the three weeks before Election Day remains one of the biggest uncertainties for the two presidential campaigns. While not a top-tier issue for many voters, the crisis has complicated Harrisβs efforts to win Michigan, a state with a major concentration of Arab American voters. She is campaigning in the state three days this week.
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