The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is likely to intensify the years-long insurgency he started against Israel, experts say, with the group changing its methods as its leadership gets decimated.
While Israel is fighting a semi-conventional war against Hamas, it fails to understand the fight the group wants, which is “an open-ended insurgency on the ground against Israeli forces in Gaza,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC, told CNN.
Hamas’ war “has just started,” Ibish said, and it is already taking the form of “disparately organized Hamas cells of guerillas and insurgents” that do not require an “integrated, vertical command and control structure.”
The group is likely to survive using low-grade, non-sophisticated weaponry, he said, including pistols, small machine-guns and even home-made improvised explosive devices (IED). They can operate under dire conditions, and “their people are willing to die,” Ibish added.
Other nations fighting non-state groups have faced similar situations, Ibish said – including the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the US in Vietnam, and even the Israelis themselves in 1982, when an invasion to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut only created the much more powerful Hezbollah.
Frank Lowenstein, who served as former US Special Envoy for Middle East peace under the Obama administration, said that while the Israelis “are understandably feeling empowered by Sinwar’s death, nobody should be under any illusion that Hamas has been defeated,” as there is “no way to kill an ideology.”
Lowenstein said that Sinwar’s death creates a leadership vacuum in Gaza, which if not filled, risks any meaningful negotiations or agreement on a hostage-ceasefire deal, which the US views as essential.
