As the news broke out that Hamas’s chief, Yahya Sinwar, was killed, Israeli commentators and anchors kept repeating the same expression in Hebrew. According to them, it was a “sgirat ma’agal”—the closure of a cycle. The expression was referring to the cycle of violence that began on October 7, with one of the most catastrophic failures in Israel’s history, as thousands of Hamas militants broke through the border wall, attacking border communities and killing young Israelis at a music festival.
The expression may have seemed appropriate as Sinwar’s death was announced almost a year after the attack and as Israel was about to celebrate the Jewish holiday of “Simchat Torah”, during which the massacre, masterminded by Sinwar, was carried out. Some Israelis distributed sweets, others danced, and soldiers celebrated.
But many, although they certainly felt that the death of the “architect” of the October 7 attacks was good news, did not celebrate. In a divided country, reactions to the death of Hamas’s leader followed a familiar fault line between those who see Hamas’s destruction as the top priority and those who feel the “cycle” will not be closed by settling the score but by freeing the hostages. While one part of the country celebrated, the other could not bring itself to do so.
As the news of Sinwar’s potential demise started to circulate, one of the first reactions was one of panic among families of hostages who had been told repeatedly that Sinwar was always surrounded by a number of hostages. Eventually, the Prime Minister’s Office informed the families that no hostages had been wounded during the operation.
Later that day, the Israeli army claimed that Sinwar’s “hostages”, who served as his “life insurance”, were the six Israelis who Hamas had executed in a tunnel in September. This explained why no hostages were near Sinwar at the time of his death and may also explain why he may have needed to move out of the Tal Sultan area in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
Although this meant no hostages were wounded, the feeling of anxiety among families of hostages did not completely disappear—firstly, because of concerns that Hamas cells could exact revenge for the death of their leader by executing more hostages.
Even if this terrible thought for those who have been waiting for their loved ones to return did not materialise, the death of Sinwar also raised a big question mark regarding the negotiations for a hostage-release deal. The families of hostages immediately released a statement urging the government to do everything it could to finally secure a deal that would see the remaining hostages released. Israel’s negotiating team itself had held hours of meetings to discuss the aftermath of this sudden, unexpected development.
'So what?'
Many of those whose loved ones were killed in the October 7 attack also highlighted how anti-climatic the news of Sinwar’s death was—not solely because it was sudden and random, as Sinwar died after encountering regular soldiers rather than in a special force operation. Reacting to Sinwar’s death, the mother of one of the festival-goers said, “ok, he is dead...” as in, so what? What now?
