Eleventh month of war in Gaza, Israel vows to eliminate new Hamas leader

Photo: Mohammed Abed Agence France-Presse Israel accuses Yahya Sinwar, until then leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, of being one of the masterminds of the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil, which triggered the war.

Benoît Finck – Agence France-Presse and Laure Al Khoury – Agence France-Presse Respectively in Jerusalem and Beirut

Published at 1:50 p.m. Updated at 3:32 p.m.

• Middle East

Israel has vowed to eliminate the new leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, as the war in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian movement entered its 11th month on Wednesday and threatens to spread across the Middle East.

Yahya Sinwar was named leader of the Islamist movement on Tuesday night to replace Ismail Haniyeh, whose assassination on July 31 in Tehran was blamed on Israel by Iran, which has promised retaliation.

Israel accuses the radical militant, until now the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, of being one of the masterminds of the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil, which triggered the war.

Hunted by Israel's Yahya Sinwar, whose movement is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, has not appeared in public since October 7.

“We will increase our efforts to find him, to attack him,” Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi said on Wednesday.

While all attempts at mediation have failed, the war, which has left nearly 40,000 dead, according to Hamas, in the small besieged Palestinian territory, has rekindled tensions in the Middle East, between Iran and its allies, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, on the one hand, and Israel on the other.

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These tensions have redoubled after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh and that of Fouad Chokr, the military leader of Hezbollah who died on July 30 in an Israeli strike near Beirut.

“Obliged to retaliate”

Hezbollah and Iran are “obliged to retaliate” to these two assassinations, the head of the Lebanese armed movement, Hassan Nasrallah, said on Tuesday. Hezbollah will retaliate “alone or as part of a unified response” by Iran and its allies, and “whatever the consequences,” he warned.

On Wednesday, at a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, its current president, Mamadou Tangara of Gambia, denounced the “ignoble” assassination of Haniyeh, which risks plunging the Middle East into a “wider conflict.”

Faced with the risks of an extension of the war, the international community is engaged in a race against time to find ways of appeasement and relaunch negotiations for a ceasefire associated with the release of the hostages held in Gaza.

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Diplomatic contacts are increasing, particularly between the mediating countries, the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

“We believe that we have never been so close” to an agreement, said the spokesman for the National Security Council of the American presidency, John Kirby, on Wednesday.

The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, whose country is Israel's main ally, asked Iran and Israel the day before to avoid a military “escalation”.

French President Emmanuel Macron also urged Tehran to “get out of the logic of retaliation”, considering that a new escalation “would be of no interest to anyone”.

Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian himself asked Western countries to stop supporting Israel to “avoid” a regional war.

After ten months of war, the Israeli army is continuing its land and air offensive against Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007, particularly in areas it claimed to have taken control of but where fighting has resumed.

The army announced on Wednesday that it was continuing its operations in the centre of the territory and had “eliminated many terrorists”.

The attack carried out on 7 October by Hamas commandos in southern Israel resulted in the death of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.

Of the 251 people kidnapped, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom have died, according to the army.

“Determined to defend ourselves”

In retaliation, Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip that has so far killed 39,677 people, including at least 24 in 24 hours, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Gaza government, led by the Hamas, which does not detail the number of civilians and combatants dead.

The offensive has plunged the Palestinian territory into a catastrophic humanitarian situation, the vast majority of 2 ,4 million Gaza residents have been displaced.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that it would send more than one million polio vaccines, while a strain of the virus was detected in wastewater samples.

While waiting for the response promised by Iran and its allies, Israel has been on alert for almost a week.

“We… are determined to defend ourselves,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday during a visit to the Tel Hashomer military base near Tel Aviv.

< p>Asked about possible Israeli retaliation on Iranian nuclear sites, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said his country was “capable of defending itself […] both by means that our enemies have seen, but also by means that they have not seen.”

Fears of a conflagration are also very strong in Lebanon, where planes Israeli soldiers once again broke the sound barrier above Beirut on Wednesday.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, Hezbollah, very powerful in Lebanon, exchanges fire almost daily with the Israeli army along the border.

A Lebanese security source reported two deaths, including a civilian and a Hezbollah member, in an Israeli strike in the Jouaiyya region in southern Lebanon. In a statement, the Israeli army said it had eliminated a “terrorist” in the area.

In this context, several countries have called on their nationals to leave the country and airlines have suspended their connections with the Lebanese capital.