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U.S. says Israel killing Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar brings chance for peace in Gaza, but the war continues
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had “settled the score with him,” but stressed that “the task before us [Israel] is not yet complete.”
Netanyahu said Israel’s focus was on securing the return of the roughly 100 hostages still in Gaza, taken during Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack last year, of whom a third are believed to be dead.
“This is an important moment in the war,” Netanyahu said to the families of the hostages, according to the Reuters news agency. “We will continue full force until the return home of all your loved ones, who are our loved ones, too. This is our supreme obligation. This is my supreme obligation.”
President Biden said Sinwar’s death after almost two decades of Hamas rule in Gaza was good news, “for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” Along with other senior U.S. officials, he indicated that it should bring new hope for a cease-fire in the year-long war.
Speaking Friday in Germany, Mr. Biden said he’d told Netanyahu that Sinwar had blood on his hands, adding: “Let’s also make this moment an opportunity” for peace.
But Hamas did not mention any renewed push for a cease-fire agreement with Israel after the killing of its leader.
“It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people,” Dr. Basem Naim, a member of the U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group’s Political Bureau said in a statement on Friday. “They can believe what they want, and this is not the first time they said that.”
“Hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these leaders became an icon for future generations to continue the journey towards a free Palestine” Naim said.
The killing of Sinwar, Hamas’ top commander in Gaza since 2017 and the group’s overall leader since August, was a massive blow to Hamas. Senior Hamas spokesperson Ismael al-Sawarta told CBS News in Gaza on Thursday that his death would “complicate the situation, because he was the key for the negotiations and he was the political leader of Hamas.”
But he added: “I don’t think his death will impact or change the war, because the Palestinian resistance is not led by an individual, but it is an institution.”
Deputy Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya confirmed Sinwar’s death Friday in a televised speech, and said the group would continue on the same path it’s been on. Al-Hayya said Hamas would not release the remaining hostages without a cease-fire deal and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
All three Hamas officials noted that the group had kept up its fight against Israel following the assassination in late July of its previous political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. Israel has killed many senior figures of both Hamas and its powerful ally Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent months — but it continues fighting both groups in conflicts that have killed tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians.
Many Israelis were jubilant over Sinwar’s death, gathering Thursday on beaches and even outside the lab where his remains were identified to chant and dance.
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty
But not everyone in the country was celebrating, and many did not appear to share in the hope that his killing might mean a turning point for the war, or for their missing loved ones.
At a rally outside the Defense Ministry for the hostages still held in Gaza, families and supporters told CBS News they feared Hamas militants could now kill those who’ve survived more than a year in captivity.
Asked whether she believed Israel was actually closer to peace, or possibly further away after Sinwar’s killing, a woman at the rally who only gave her first name, Ariella, was unsure.
“I don’t know. I wish I knew,” she told CBS News. “I want it to be closer to be peace. I really want them to be back. I want everything to be okay again.”
Among the hostages still in Gaza is 23-year-old Israeli-American Omer Neutra. His parents Orna and Ronen just marked their son’s birthday — without him, for the second time.
“It’s just unfathomable that this is his second birthday in captivity,” Orna said. “We really, really hope that this nightmare will finally come to an end for us… We are still stuck on October 7th; One long, nightmarish day.”
Israel launched its war in Gaza in immediate response to Hamas’ terrorist attack, which killed 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage. That war has now killed more than 42,400 Palestinians, wounded almost 100,000, and displaced virtually the entire 2.3 million people of the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run enclave’s health ministry.
And despite the remarks from Mr. Biden suggesting a new opportunity to push for peace, the Israeli military was still escalating its operations in northern Gaza on Friday.
Palestinians in Gaza, who’ve lived under constant bombardment for a year and been displaced time and time again, voiced little optimism to CBS News.
“It won’t change anything,” one woman said of Sinwar’s death. “Someone else will replace him. God willing, the war will end and we will go back home.”
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King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrived in Sydney on Friday for the first Australian visit by a reigning monarch in more than a decade, a trip that has rekindled debate about the nation’s constitutional links to Britain.
The Sydney Opera House’s iconic sails were illuminated with images of previous royal visits to welcome the couple, whose six-day trip will be brief by royal standards. Charles, 75, is being treated for cancer, which led to the scaled-down itinerary.
Charles and Camilla were welcomed in light rain at Sydney Airport by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns and the king’s representative in Australia, Governor-General Sam Mostyln.
Victoria Jones/Shutterstock / Getty Images
Charles is only the second reigning British monarch to visit Australia. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, became the first 70 years ago.
While the welcome has been warm, Australia’s national and state leaders want the royals removed from their constitution.
Monarchists expect the visit will strengthen Australians’ connection to their sovereign. Opponents hope for a rejection of the concept that someone from the other side of the world is Australia’s head of state.
The Australian Republic Movement, which campaigns for an Australian citizen to replace the British monarch as head of state, likens the royal visit to a touring act in the entertainment industry.
The ARM this week launched what it calls a campaign to “Wave Goodbye to Royal Reign with Monarchy: The Farewell Oz Tour!”
ARM co-chair Esther Anatolitis said royal visits to Australia were “something of a show that comes to town.”
“Unfortunately, it is a reminder that Australia’s head of state isn’t full-time, isn’t Australian. It’s a part-time person based overseas who’s the head of state of numerous places,” Anatolitis told the AP.
“We say to Charles and Camilla: ‘Welcome, we hope you’re enjoying our country and good health and good spirits.’ But we also look forward to this being the final tour of a sitting Australian monarch and that when they come back to visit soon, we look forward to welcoming them as visiting dignitaries,” she added.
Philip Benwell, national chair of the Australian Monarchist League, which campaigns for Australia’s constitutional links to Britain to be maintained, expects reaction to the royal couple will be overwhelmingly positive.
“Something like the royal visit brings the king closer in the minds of people, because we have an absent monarchy,” Benwell told the AP.
“The visit by the king brings it home that Australia is a constitutional monarchy and it has a king,” he added.
Benwell is critical of the premiers of all six states, who have declined invitations to attend a reception for Charles in the national capital Canberra.
The premiers each explained that they had more pressing engagements on the day such as cabinet meetings and overseas travel.
“It would be virtually incumbent upon the premiers to be in Canberra to meet him and pay their respects,” Benwell said. “To not attend can be considered to be a snub, because this is not a normal visit. This is the first visit of a king ever to Australia.”
Charles was drawn into Australia’s republic debate months before his visit.
The Australian Republic Movement wrote to Charles in December last year requesting a meeting in Australia and for the king to advocate their cause. Buckingham Palace politely wrote back in March to say the king’s meetings would be decided upon by the Australian government. A meeting with the ARM does not appear on the official itinerary.
“Whether Australia becomes a republic is…a matter for the Australian public to decide,” said the letter from Buckingham Palace.
The Associated Press has seen copies of both letters.
Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to retain Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. That result is widely regarded as a consequence of disagreement about how a president should be chosen rather than majority support for a monarch.
After visiting Sydney and Canberra, which are 155 miles apart, Charles will then travel to Samoa to open the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
When his mother made the last of her 16 journeys to Australia in 2011 at the age of 85, she visited Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne on the east coast before opening the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the west coast city of Perth.
Elizabeth’s first grueling Australian tour at the age of 27 took in scores of far-flung Outback towns; an estimated 75% of the nation’s population turned out to see her.
Australia then had a racially discriminatory policy that favored British immigrants. Immigration policy has been non-discriminatory since 1973.
Anatolitis noted that Australia is far more multicultural now, with most of the population either born overseas or with a overseas-born parent.
“In the ’50s, we didn’t have that global interconnectedness that we have now,” she said.
In February, Buckingham Palace announced that Charles was being treated for an unspecific form of cancer, disclosing that it was discovered while doctors were treating an enlarged prostate. After pausing public appearances for three months, Charles resumed royal duties in April.
In March, Kensington Palace reported that Charles’ daughter-in-law, Catherine, Princess of Wales, had also been diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer which was discovered during abdominal surgery. In September, Catherine announced that she had completed chemotherapy treatments, and “doing what I can to stay cancer free is now my focus.”
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