What will happen after the disappearance of Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar?

The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar in an Israeli army operation near Rafah constitutes, according to all international observers, a major turning point in the war that the Israeli army has been waging in Gaza for more than a year.

The question that remains unanswered concerns the developments that this war could experience, after the death of the leader of Hamas.

Western leaders, led by the American president, rejoiced at the death of the Hamas leader and called it a “military victory”. On the other hand, they were quick to say that the disappearance of the Hamas leader constitutes an “opportunity” to end the war in Gaza as soon as possible and to allow the release of the Israeli hostages.

Let’s try to decipher the positions expressed by American and European leaders the day after the death of the Hamas leader.

For the American Administration, the death of the Hamas leader, which it was quick to describe as an Israeli “military victory”, if it could quench the thirst for revenge of Israeli political and military leaders, must be translated on the diplomatic level by a gesture which serves the campaign of the Democratic candidate in the presidential election on November 5.

President Biden and candidate Kamala Harris both expressed their wish to see the Israeli government extend this “military victory” with a new victory, political this time, that only the release of the hostages still held in Gaza could materialize, which supposes at least a temporary cessation of fighting.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to travel to the region to persuade Qatari and Egyptian mediators to put pressure on the Hamas leadership to agree to a ceasefire on the terms of the Israeli winner.

The Americans’ sham ceasefire

Make no mistake. The “ceasefire” mentioned by the Americans, and assuming that it is accepted by the Israelis, will be nothing other than a short truce, time to allow the democratic camp to pass the threshold of presidential election on November 5, with something that can be presented to voters as an “achievement”.

After the American election, and whoever wins, Harris or Trump, everything indicates that the Israeli government will have a free hand to continue the dirty work it has already started in the north of the Gaza enclave: chasing away the 400,000 Palestinians who are still there and declare the entire north of the enclave a “military zone”, pending the establishment of new Israeli settlements.

Indeed, the American statements that we heard a few months ago, which publicly opposed the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, have simply evaporated in recent weeks. The day after the death of Yahya Sinouar, President Biden reiterated to Netanyahu the attachment to their common position, which consists of refusing at all costs the return of Hamas to the Gaza Strip.

Whatever the political formula and procedural modalities that will be retained for the “next day”, Americans and Israelis agree on the essential: Israel’s “security” recommends redrawing the map of what Palestine was. historical and perhaps beyond.

In this sad scenario, even the puppet Palestinian Authority in Ramallah no longer has a place. While awaiting the expulsion of a large part of the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, a new administration of “indigenous affairs”, like the Indian reservations that America experimented with in the 19th century, will emerge with the complicity of certain Arab Gulf States.

European leaders are showing signs that they do not necessarily share the American position, which they consider too partial and above all dangerous for regional and international peace. But what else can European leaders do, apart from diplomatically and timidly expressing their disagreement with Washington, as long as Europe continues to accept the vassal status imposed on it by its American “protector” within the framework of an Alliance? unequal transatlantic?

The headlong flight of the Israeli government

However, the outcome of the region’s dangerous developments relates to another issue that continues to be obscured by observers and analysts: namely, the question of the factors governing the particular and complex relationship that exists between American “protector” and the Israeli “protege”.

Will the American Secretary of State succeed in persuading Netanyahu to give in to the American demand for a temporary two-week truce, even if it means resuming his murderous madness after November 5?

Nothing is less certain. The spokespersons for the American Administration know full well that they are lying when they say that it was Yahya Sinouar who blocked negotiations for a ceasefire.

The acceptance by the Hamas leadership, last May, of the Biden plan which was concocted by the director of the CIA would never have been possible without the approval of Sinouar. The Americans know that it was Netanyahu who sabotaged the negotiations, by imposing new conditions at the last minute that were unacceptable to Hamas.

Will the American Administration, which has been disappointed more than once by its Israeli “protege”, be rewarded this time by a Netanyahu who owes it enormously? Why would he do it two weeks before an American election in which everyone knows that he expects and hopes for the victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump?

The inevitable Palestinian question

However, whatever their degree of convergence (or divergence), the calculations of the Americans and the Israelis are not ready to come true as they hope, for the simple reason that they continue to ignore an essential variable in the regional strategic equation. No Israeli tactical victory can lead to a strategic victory until the monstrous injustice done to the Palestinian people is repaired.

At the announcement of the death of the leader of Hamas, Israeli leaders did not hide their joy, nor their desire to see the end of a war whose overtones of revenge should not hide the geopolitical motives of more and more obvious.

Netanyahu found nothing better to offer his adversaries than this injunction to surrender: “Give up your weapons and we will spare your life.” But behind the declarations of joy for media use, the Israeli government, which sends its soldiers to their death in a war without a viable political outcome, knows that it is not at the end of its troubles.

A few weeks ago, the Netanyahu government offered, via Egyptian and Qatari mediators, to Sinouar and his companions, a secure exit passage from Gaza to Sudan. Sinouar preferred to face a tank and die with his weapon in his hand.

The images which immortalized his last moments visibly did more harm than good to the Israeli leaders, who lectured the soldiers who filmed and broadcast these images, the psychological impact of which risks thwarting the objective expected by the war propaganda Israeli.

On March 22, 2004, an Israeli helicopter shot down the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. A few weeks later, on April 17, 2004, it was the turn of his successor, Abdelaziz al-Rantissi, to be killed in another air raid. Twenty years later, we know how Hamas recovered from this double ordeal, with a new, more radical leadership.

Yahya Sinouar was killed inside a building targeted by a Merkava tank. But the Palestinian cause is still alive as long as Palestinians live, attached to their land and thirsty for justice. It is Netanyahu himself who admits this by declaring: “We killed Sinwar, but the war continues.”

The adventures of a war, which can experience more or less long pauses but which is condemned to resume every ten years until its root causes have been dealt with, should not make us forget the essentials. The regional order that the American Empire seeks to impose in the Middle East, counting on the military superiority of its Israeli policeman and on the vile collaboration of Arab regimes which owe their survival only to tyranny and corruption, will be more unbearable every day.

The tactical victories recorded by the occupying army risk fueling Israel’s arrogance, which was singled out in 1967 by General De Gaulle.

But it is this arrogance, backed by the atrocities committed by an army which now stops at nothing, not even the most serious war crimes which, according to many international observers, amount to crimes against humanity, which risks set fire to the powder in a region which has accumulated, for decades, so many contradictions and so many injustices before the cowardly and complacent gaze of an international community which barely murmurs its disapproval, but which admits itself powerless in the face of American omnipotence. But until when?