War in the Middle-East

Israeli officials ran tests to confirm Sinwar’s identity after he was spotted in the rubble of a building struck by an Israeli tank in Gaza early Thursday, according to a radio station run by Israel’s military.

Israel has told the US that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre in Israel, is dead, a person familiar with the matter.

US officials were mum in the immediate moments after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced it was investigating whether a strike in Gaza had taken out Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

There are no signs that hostages were harmed in the mission that left Sinwar dead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier Thursday. Negotiations for a hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal have been at a standstill for almost a month, according to Qatar’s prime minister, who said there was “silence from all parties.”

If Sinwar is in fact confirmed dead, the ramifications for the Biden administration would be momentous. His potential death, perhaps more than anything else, the singular event that many US officials had pointed to as the biggest potential game-changer in the Israel-Hamas war that has now been ongoing for more than a year.

With a ceasefire and 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 – and that that could open up doors that simply would not be otherwise. US officials have looked at Sinwar, simply put, the scalp that Israel needs most to be able to declare that they are done with the Gaza war.

Even in discussions of a so-called “all for all” deal – the idea that every hostage held by Hamas would be released in exchange for every Palestinian prisoner that Hamas wants freed – which is widely viewed as far-fetched – some US officials had mused perhaps such an idea could be remotely viable if Sinwar were dead.