Hamas leader Sinwar’s gamble and the remodeling of the entire Middle East

JERUSALEM – In the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 7, 2023, Yahya Sinwar and his family moved among the tunnels underneath Gaza, which the terrorist organization he led – Hamas – had dug over the preceding 16 years or so.

The ideologue and religious fanatic was doing so in advance of Hamas commandos cross-border raid into Israel, which he anticipated would redraw the Middle Eastern map and tilt the balance of power in the region. He was right … just not in the way he envisaged.

BREAKING: IDF released video footage of Yahya Sinwar and his family, hours before the October 7th massacre, bringing food, pillows, and TV screen to his underground tunnel where he was hiding. They also found tens of thousands of shekels.

Sinwar cared only about himself. pic.twitter.com/9p3ZMPHSDq

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) October 19, 2024

Sinwar made a number of assumptions – about his implacable foe, Israel, (despite its doctors saving his life with expert medical care), the strength of his own forces, the hoped-for international abandonment of Israel (which did happen, although not quite to the extent he anticipated), and the level of support he could call upon from his ideological fellow-travelers, particularly Iran. As it turns out, he was wrong about pretty much all of them; and his hubristic miscalculation has generated the kind of energy in the region, which could topple long-standing regimes – particularly in Syria and potentially even in Iran.

It is one of the modern day’s most elusive counterfactual arguments; if Sinwar had been a rational actor might he have played an even longer game (as both Hezbollah and Iran wished), and have been able to create the conditions – not through barbarism and violence – where his aims could have been achieved through other means? We will never know. At around 6:30 on that fateful Black Sabbath, we wouldn’t know it yet, but the Middle East would be changed forever.

There are significant markers, which need to be pointed out to help plot out the evolution of the situation in the Middle East.

Oct. 7, 2023 – Hamas terrorists, eventually followed by ordinary Gazans carry out the worst massacre of Jews – some 1,200 in one day – since the Second World War. Some 250 hostages are taken back into Gaza, including a nine-month-old baby. Several soldiers killed in the initial action are also kidnapped.

Oct. 8, 2023 – While there are still Hamas, Gazan terrorists roaming around parts of Israel, Hezbollah, the farthest forward unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Lebanon begins to fire rockets over the border in northern Israel. The Israeli government decides to create tens of thousands of internally displaced refugees, fearing an Oct. 7-style attack across the Lebanese border.

Oct. 18, 2023 – In a strong show of support, U.S. President Joe Biden arrives in Israel in a solidarity mission, as well as to warn Jerusalem against military adventurism in other parts of the Middle East.

Oct. 21, 2023 – Israel sends in aid trucks, filled with fuel, food, and medicines to Gaza.

Oct. 27, 2023 – Having fully mobilized and called up some 300,000 reserve soldiers, the IDF rolls its tanks into Gaza. This part at least was definitely part of Sinwar’s plan.

Nov. 15, 2023 – IDF troops enter Al-Shifa hospital finding Hamas command center, an enormous tunnel, as well as significant weapons caches.

Nov. 21, 2023 – Israel and Hamas agree to four-day humanitarian ceasefire; 50 Israeli women and children were supposed to be released in return for 150 criminal Palestinian women and children detainees in Israel.

Dec. 1, 2023 – War resumes after Hamas releases some 104 hostages and Israel releases 240 detainees.

Dec. 14, 2023 – Biden accuses Israel of “indiscriminate bombing.”

Jan. 11, 2024 – International Court of Justice in the Hague hears opening statements in a case in which South Africa accuses Israel of “war crimes and genocide.”

April 13, 2024 – Iran fires some 300 ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles at Israel, purportedly in retaliation for the elimination of several senior IRGC leaders in a building adjacent to Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria.

July 13, 2024 – At the eighth attempt, IDF successfully eliminates Hamas military mastermind Mohammed Deif – although confirmation would not come for a few weeks.

July 20, 2024 – Israeli jets pound Hodeidah port in Yemen, after Houthi terrorists fired a at least three ballistic missiles at the Jewish state.

July 27, 2024 – 12 Druze children are killed in Majdal Shams in northern Israel after Hezbollah fired a missile into the soccer field they were playing on.

July 30, 2024 – IAF eliminates reclusive senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, one of the terrorist group’s strongholds.

July 31, 2024 – An explosive charge is planted in the room of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an IRGC compound in Tehran, killing him and his bodyguard. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pazeshkian, after former president Ebraim Raisi was killed in a May helicopter crash in Iran.

Aug. 28, 2024 – IDF launches widespread incursion into Judea and Samaria to tackle the issue of Palestinian terrorists, increasingly armed by Iran. This largest operation since the 2002 Defensive Shield, it came in response to an attempted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

Aug. 31, 2024 – IDF recovers bodies of 6 hostages – including dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin – who were murdered shortly before.

Sept. 17, 2024 – Israel’s Mossad pulls off the remarkable beeper operation, in which thousands of personal pagers, almost exclusively only given to Hezbollah operatives, simultaneously explode across large swaths of Lebanon and Syria.

Sept. 27, 2024 – IAF attacks Hezbollah headquarters with 80 tons of missiles, killing long-serving general secretary Hassan Nasrallah, the face of the organization.

Oct. 1, 2024 – Iran fires another salvo of 180 ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel.

Oct. 17, 2024 – IDF confirms killing of Yahya Sinwar, who was eliminated after a routine patrol stumbled upon his whereabouts.

Alone in a hideout, henchman dead, no right hand, amid the ruins he made of Gaza, his mighty army vanquished, the defeated warlord Sinwar—who promised to destory Israel—impotently bats away an IDF drone as he dies, knowing his life couldn’t have been a greater failure. pic.twitter.com/MCoUdDPXF1

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) October 17, 2024

Oct. 27, 2024 – Between a third and a half of Israel’s entire air force – fighter jets and refueling planes – fly some 1,200 miles to strike targets in Iran, including around the capital, Tehran, It is the first time since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s that Iran has been directly targeted. The IAF struck a secret nuclear development site, as well as destroying all the country’s anti-aircraft missile batteries, without losing a single plane.

Nov. 27, 2024 – Israel and Lebanon agree to a ceasefire to bring at least a temporary halt to the fighting.

Nov. 29 – Dec. 2, 2024 – Sunni Islamists with the likely backing of Qatar and Turkey rout Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and take over large swaths of the country.

This timeline shows the level of devastation Sinwar’s decision brought to the region, and the unintended consequence that far from ending the Jewish state, and there is an argument to be made that it is in a stronger position than it was, certainly on Oct. 7 and for a few weeks afterward.

Israel’s determination to take on its enemies – for what else could it do in an existential war – has provided succor to others in the region. Iran and Hezbollah are still powerful enemies, but their respective rhetoric has been shown up by Israel’s relentlessness. In the nineteenth century, German field marshal Helmuth von Moltke said, “No military plan survives contact with the enemy,” which seems an eerily accurate appraisal of this situation. Sinwar thought he knew Israel and Israelis from his time in its prison and his command of the language. However, his gamble looks like it might end of reorienting the balance of power in the entire Middle East, taking down some of his erstwhile friends with it.