With Sinwar's death, Benjamin Netanyahu could end the war in Gaza. But don't bet a dime on it | Jonathan Freedland

A Good day to the world, said Joe Biden. Best day of my life, said Mohammed, a 22-year-old Palestinian in Gaza who refused to give his last name to The New York Times for fear of being punished by Hamas for speaking out. A day of celebration, said countless Israelis.

They were reacting to the death of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and architect of the massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7 that triggered this final year of devastation, a war that has left Gaza in ruins and the lives of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians cost civilians. As Muhammad put it, “(He) started the war, scattering us and expelling us, without water, food and money…He is the one who made Israel do this.”

The hope that Mohammed, Biden and leaders around the world are now clinging to is that Sinwar's death could bring an end to this horror show. They allow themselves that rarest of emotions in the Middle East: optimism. And there's a reason for that. The problem is that these same facts can also serve as ingredients for a much more familiar Middle Eastern commodity: pessimism.

Let's start with the hopeful outlook. This is based on the simple truth that Sinwar was an obstacle in the months-long attempts to broker a ceasefire, either saying no to terms negotiated by U.S. or Qatari diplomats or suddenly becoming unavailable when a decision was needed . His demand that Israel agree to both a permanent cessation of hostilities, rather than a mere pause, and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, thereby allowing Hamas to regroup and regain control, guaranteed that it could never come to an agreement. Now that he's gone, that obstacle has been removed.

What he leaves behind, say the optimists, is an organization in disarray, with a power vacuum at the top. The deaths of Sinwar and the leader of Hamas's military wing, Mohammed Deif, in July mean that there are few people of serious standing in Gaza. Israel's relentless military pressure took its toll on Hamas, evident by the fact that in his final moments, Sinwar was not in a well-defended command post directing his troops, but rather running from house to house alone and limited to defending himself firing an Israeli drone with a stick.

According to this reading, whoever takes his place will be too weak to stick to the hard line he advocates. They could agree to ceasefire conditions that Israel could also agree to: such as a smaller number of Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli prisons in return for the remaining hostages, and accepting a role for Palestinian technocrats not affiliated with Hamas in the administration of the post-war Gaza Strip. Such a deal could be sweetened for whoever signed it by the promise of safe exit from the Strip and resettlement in Qatar.

The pressure to agree to such an agreement would come not only from the Arab states, which have at times acted as Hamas sponsors, but also from the street, from people like Mohammed. He is hardly alone among Palestinians in despising Sinwar for the terrible and inevitable Israeli retaliation he inflicted on Gaza, and long before that for the acts that made him infamous as the butcher of Khan Younis: his notoriously sadistic torture and He accused the murder of these Palestinians of collaborating with Israel.

Of course, there are two sides to any negotiation, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is no less stubborn in his opposition to a deal that could end the war, even if it has angered most of the Israeli public and, above all, the families of the remaining 101 hostages held in Gaza. The optimistic reading assumes that Netanyahu may relent after Sinwar's death because he can now achieve the “total victory” that has long been his prerequisite for ending the war. With the photo he longs for – of the country's slain arch-enemy – available on every Israeli phone, Netanyahu will have the room for compromise.

So that's the hopeful scenario. The opposing view views each of these facts through an opposite and darker lens. First, it finds nothing encouraging in the void where Sinwar once was. His absence means there is now no address for negotiators, no one with the authority to agree a plausible deal. On the contrary, the remaining Hamas leaders may feel obliged to follow Sinwar's intransigent stance, not least because of the manner of his death.

Many Palestinians and their Arab supporters see the drone footage of Sinwar's final moments as heroic: the last man standing, fighting to the end and dying a martyr. Instead of hiding underground or in the luxury of exile in a Gulf state like so many of Hamas' top politicians, he died at the front. The legend has already emerged on Arab social media – and whatever Israeli official thought it was a good idea to publish these images may live to regret their decision.

There will certainly be an appetite for revenge within Hamas. The obvious way for Sinwar's avengers to strike back would be to harm or kill Hamas's Israeli hostages, a prospect that is once again frightening the hostages' families.

That brings us to the other key partner in any agreement to end the war. Netanyahu's announcement of Sinwar's death contained language intended to dampen any hope of an early end to the conflict. It was the “beginning of the end,” he said, but nothing more. Short of not only a hostage release, but also If Hamas surrendered and “laid down its weapons,” the war would continue.

You can see why he would say that. Netanyahu feels he is on the right track and has strengthened his own position. He can now pose as a dragon slayer – Sinwar in Rafah, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut – and as the man who defied the naysayers only to prevail in the end. His cheerleaders are quick to note that world leaders, including Biden, had urged Netanyahu to stay out of Rafah: Had he listened, they say, Sinwar would still be alive.

By this logic, why should he now bow to US pressure to seize the opportunity and agree to a deal? Eventually he got used to ignoring Washington and paying little for it. The latest example came this week when the US secretary of state and defense minister released a joint letter calling on Israel to increase the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, even though signs on the ground suggest that Netanyahu is pursuing at least part of the plan The so-called generals plan to clear the northern Gaza Strip of civilians and those who are still considered part of Hamas before giving them the choice: surrender or starvation.

For Netanyahu to change course, he must break away from the far-right coalition partners who allowed him to avoid the elections he feared by confirming him in office – and who believe that now that Hamas is on the rocks , is just the right time to make it tougher – and give a Democratic administration the prize of a diplomatic breakthrough, barely more than two weeks before the election that Kamala Harris is expected to lose and Donald Trump is expected to win. Is such a dramatic change from the Prime Minister likely?

Of course the smart money would say no. Typically, it is those who rely on optimism who lose out in the Middle East. But the many Israelis who oppose Netanyahu now have a chance. They can admit that the prime minister has achieved some tactical successes, but demand that he translates them into strategic successes – from a ceasefire agreement and the return of the hostages to a diplomatic process that offers a different future for Israel and its neighbors . Echoing an earlier era, their message might be: With Sinwar's death you have achieved your complete victory – now you win peace.