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Knock-On Effects

MIDDLE EAST

The death of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza marked what could become the beginning of the end of the conflict in Gaza.

As the leader of Hamas, the Iranian-backed governing body of the Gaza Strip, Sinwar was an architect of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and saw 250 more kidnapped. Since the attack, the resulting Israel-Gaza war has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Israeli leaders say his death will turn the page.

“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the news broke, according to the Associated Press. “This is the start of the day after Hamas.”

Even so, the Oct. 7 attacks also triggered other conflicts in the region that might just be getting started, say observers.

The Lebanese capital Beirut, formerly a buzzing cosmopolitan city on the Mediterranean Sea, is now quiet due to Israeli attacks against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed political party and militant group, the BBC reported.

As the AP wrote, Those attacks have ranged from killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September and, more recently, his heir apparent, Hashem Safieddine, to targeting the group’s extensive financial networks.

Thousands have been killed or injured in the past few weeks. Beirut has become full of refugees from the south where the Israeli army has invaded. Life is now on hold, according to Maya Bekhazi Noun, an entrepreneur in the city, who said about 85 percent of restaurants, bars and other businesses have closed or limited their hours.

“It is difficult to keep the places open for joy when there are many people sleeping without enough food and supplies nearby,” she told the BBC. “We are on hold. We were aware of the war in the south – and somehow affected by it too – but many like me didn’t expect the war to come this close.”

Meanwhile, tensions are continuing to rise quickly in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority, which runs the region, has been losing popularity and power for a host of reasons, creating a vacuum that Hamas and other hawkish anti-Israeli forces could exploit to ramp up operations against Israel in the territory, argued World Politics Review.

Already, violence there is at the highest level seen in decades, noted Vox, mainly spiking due to settlers’ increasing aggression, according to Haaretz. Meanwhile, over the past year, Israeli forces killed 165 children in the territory, the UN reported.

Israel, which has withheld tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority, arguably shares the blame for this situation because the Authority has been unable to pay officials and others, putting enormous financial stress on residents who otherwise had a stake in tolerating Israeli power in their backyards, analysts writing in the Conversation explained.

Most concerning is Israel and Iran’s attacks on each other. Over the weekend, Israel launched strikes on Iran in retaliation for the massive volley of ballistic missiles that Iran fired at Israel last month, the Times of Israel wrote. The Hindustan Times worried that the tit-for-tat attacks might trigger World War III.

This escalation, in spite of limited casualties in Israel or Iran, is what many world leaders warned Israel about last year, even as it remained unimaginable, wrote Max Boot, a columnist for the Washington Post.

“A year ago, it was unthinkable for Israel and Iran to be directly attacking each other’s territory … (even as) the two countries have carried on a shadow war for years,” he said. “Now, what was unthinkable has, alas, become routine.”

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