Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive

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Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive

Just about all of the actors in the region are looking for an “offramp” to the conflict, many analysts say. But Hezbollah and Hamas are talking tough, and Israel is not backing down.

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By Vivian Yee

The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be ready to declare victory and move on, while a demoralized Hamas might show greater flexibility in cease-fire talks.

Or, at least, that outcome would most likely be welcomed by most of the countries. Despite their pledges to keep on fighting, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies may also be looking for offramps, analysts say, even if Israel seems not to be displaying much appetite for taking the win.

“All of them are super eager for offramps. They have been from the start,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group, speaking of the Arab nations. “It’s a difficult situation for the entire region. And there are many ways in which this could get much worse.”

Egypt and Jordan, just next door to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, have called repeatedly for a cease-fire. Beyond their people’s anguish over civilian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, they are anxious to end the instability rocking the region and halt the damage to their economies.

Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, recently warned that Egypt would have to transition to what he called a “war economy” if increasing regional instability threatens critical sources of Egyptian revenue, including tourism and shipping through the Suez Canal. Traffic through the canal has dropped by about half over the past year as Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is retaliation for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The Gulf Arab monarchies have also pushed for calm. Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, as well as Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, all discussed working toward an end to the conflict in calls on Thursday with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Not only is a safe environment good for business, but the Gulf States also recognize that their ambitious national development plans cannot succeed in a region embroiled in constant conflict, especially one involving their neighbor, Iran.

Their belligerent stance notwithstanding, even Israel’s most implacable enemies, the so-called axis of resistance — Iran and the armed groups it supports, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, the Houthis and various armed militias in Iraq — may be looking for a way out of a conflict that is proving increasingly destructive and risky for them, analysts say.

“They’re all cornered. The axis of resistance is definitely, definitely on the back foot at the moment,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East security specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Iran, for its part, was not looking for all-out war with Israel in the first place, at least not after Oct. 7, analysts and United States officials who track the conflict say. It initially declined to follow Hamas’s attack on Israel with significant offensives of its own, and while it has responded to Israeli attacks on its soil, it has stopped short of a retaliation that would draw a devastating response from Israel, the analysts and officials say.

But actually agreeing to a cease-fire depends more on Israel and Hamas than on any of those actors. And while many in Israel have called for an end to the fighting to bring home Israeli hostages held in Gaza and lessen the strain on Israel’s military and economy, the country’s leaders have repeatedly escalated the war.

In recent months, Israel has sent troops into Lebanon, killed thousands of people in airstrikes there, struck Yemen and Syria, assassinated a string of top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and mounted another major offensive in northern Gaza. And it is still expected to deliver a retaliatory strike for a previous Iranian missile assault.

“Today, evil suffered a severe blow, but the task before us is not yet complete,” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said in a video statement on Thursday after Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death.

Iran and its proxies still have the capacity to create havoc, and Hezbollah and a few Iran-backed militias in Iraq projected defiance after Wednesday’s killing. “The resistance will create not hundreds, but thousands like Sinwar to take revenge on his killers,” said Kadhim al-Fartousi, the spokesman for Sayyid al-Shuhada, an Iran-linked Iraqi armed group.

Hezbollah said its leadership gave orders to move to “a new and escalating phase” in its conflict with Israel, without giving details, and Hamas has vowed to fight to the last man.

Nevertheless, the death of Mr. Sinwar is not expected to elicit a major response from Iran or its proxies. Though the Iranian news media and officials were already portraying Mr. Sinwar as a “martyr,” his death was more or less expected, analysts said.

And unlike with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the previous Hamas leader, who was killed in July while visiting Tehran — a humiliation that led Iran to rain missiles on Israel — Mr. Sinwar died far away in Gaza, making his killing less embarrassing to Iran than Mr. Haniyeh’s.

A senior commander in one of the Iraqi militias repeated what fighters like him had been saying for months: Iran and its partners have been facing too much damage from Hamas’s single-minded focus on the Palestinian struggle, which had dragged the whole region into the flames. The commander declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

With Mr. Sinwar’s killing, he said, he believed the region would begin to calm down.

Iran is also trying to limit the growing damage to the proxies it so painstakingly built up over the years with advice, weapons and financing. Such groups were meant to help protect Iran. Now, it finds itself under attack because of them.

“My sense is that the Iranians are looking for breathing room and reprieve here,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Ms. Geranmayeh said Iran could take additional steps to de-escalate the violence, perhaps by urging Hamas’s remaining leaders in Gaza not to avenge Mr. Sinwar’s killing by executing the Israeli captives still in Gaza.

The hostages are politically crucial in both Israel and Washington, and their deaths would further sink any chance of a cease-fire. If Iran can make clear to Israel and the United States that it has helped moderate calls for revenge against the hostages, that could dial down tensions, Ms. Geranmayeh said.

If Hamas’s remaining leaders decide to embrace a cease-fire, analysts said, Iran and its partners, including Hezbollah, are unlikely to object — though any continued Israeli occupation of Gaza could provoke more resistance.

In the end, however, “It’s up to Israel to decide whether to continue escalating, building on what it sees as its own strategic advantage — or whether to call victory and try to consolidate and tone it down,” Mr. Hokayem said.

But Israel shows few signs of letting up.

If Iran and its allies “can get a cease-fire in place now, I don’t think they will say no,” said Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. “Everyone wants this to end at this point. Except for Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Reporting was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin and Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon; Ismaeel Naar from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.