Israel and Hamas at War, Day 306 | Eleventh Month of War in Gaza, Israel Vows to Eliminate New Hamas Leader

(Jerusalem) Israel vowed Wednesday to eliminate the new leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, as the war in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian movement entered its eleventh month and threatens to spread across the Middle East.

Yahya Sinouar was appointed leader of the Islamist movement on Tuesday evening to replace Ismail Haniyeh, whose assassination on July 31 in Tehran was attributed to Israel by Iran, which has promised reprisals.

Israel accuses the radical militant, who until then was 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.

Read “Criticism and Concerns in Gaza After New Hamas Leader”

Hunted by Israel, Yahya Sinouar, 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 Lebanese Hezbollah, on the one hand, and Israel on the other.

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

“Forced to fight back”

Hezbollah and Iran are “obliged to retaliate” to these two assassinations, the leader of the Lebanese armed movement, Hassan Nasrallah, said on Tuesday. Hezbollah will retaliate “whatever the consequences,” he warned.

At a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) accused Israel of being “fully responsible” for Haniyeh’s assassination.

Its current president, the Gambian Mamadou Tangara, also denounced a “despicable” act 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 to relaunch negotiations with a view to a ceasefire associated with the release of the hostages held in Gaza.

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

“We believe we have never been closer” 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 “move away from the logic of retaliation”, saying that a new escalation “would be of no interest to anyone”.

Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian has called on 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, in power since 2007 in Gaza, particularly in areas which it had 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 numerous terrorists”.

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

Of the 251 people abducted, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom are dead, 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 Hamas-led Gaza government, which does not provide details on the number of civilians and fighters killed.

The offensive has plunged the Palestinian territory into a catastrophic humanitarian situation, with the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants displaced.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that it would send more than a million polio vaccines there, as 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 […] “We are determined to defend ourselves,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday during a visit to the Tel Hashomer military base near Tel Aviv.

Egypt said on Wednesday it had asked Egyptian carriers not to enter Iranian airspace on Thursday morning due to planned “military exercises” in Iran.

Fears of a conflagration are also very high in Lebanon, where Israeli military planes once again broke the sound barrier over Beirut on Wednesday.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, Hezbollah, which is very powerful in Lebanon, has been exchanging fire almost daily with the Israeli army along the border.

A Lebanese security source reported two dead, 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.

Hezbollah said it launched rockets in response into northern Israel.

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