Hamas
Heading towards the great war everyone says they want to avoid
Wolfgang Hansson
This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Published 21.17
Right after the terrorist attack in October last year, Israel's prime minister declared that all Hamas leaders were "dead men walking".
That Israel succeeded in killing the political leader of Hamas is a great success for Benjamin Netanyahu.
But at the same time, it is another step towards the big war that everyone involved says they want to avoid.
Quick version
Ever since the horrific attack on Israeli civilians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated goal has been to kill the man behind it, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's military leader in Gaza.
But despite ten months of war, Israel has not been able to locate Sinwar, who is believed to be hiding in one of Gaza's tunnels.
Netanyahu needs a success to be able to continue the war and make the people of Israel believe in his vision of "total victory".
So when the opportunity arose to knock out Ismail Haniya, Hamas' political leader headquartered in Qatar, Netanyahu gave the order to strike.
It is unclear whether Haniya knew about or gave the go-ahead to the terrorist attack in southern Israel. He was among the Hamas leaders who advocated diplomacy and negotiations alongside the armed struggle.
I met him after Hamas won the elections in Gaza in 2006. I got to sit in on one of their government meetings. At the time, Hamas wanted to present a more moderate facade to the outside world.
Haniya was in Iran with Israel's arch-enemy, which facilitated Netanyahu's decision. Israel does not have to consider what Iran thinks. Perhaps Netanyahu even considers it good that Iran is humiliated by the killing of a prominent guest on their soil.
Israel's assassination is the second in 24 hours. Last night Hezbollah's top military commander, Fuad Shukr, was killed in an Israeli missile attack on Lebanon's capital, Beirut. This as revenge for the bomb a few days earlier against a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, when at least twelve children died.
Eye for eye
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is what applies in the Middle East. This eternal spiral of violence is what has made the entire region in the last year in constant threat of a major war.
Many thought it would come when Iran for the first time directly attacked Israel with hundreds of missiles earlier this year. But Israel chose a relatively restrained revenge and the situation was temporarily defused.
Now Israel faces the threat of two revenge attacks. One from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and another from Iran. Depending on what these attacks look like, Israel will be forced to respond.
The risk of escalation is obvious but not inevitable.
Here, the US plays an important role as a restraining force vis-à-vis Israel. When Netanyahu recently visited the United States, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was very clear that the United States wants to see a ceasefire and a quick end to the war in Gaza.
But every time the specter of a truce appears on the horizon, Israel's prime minister acts to extinguish all hopes.
It is not possible to negotiate a truce with Hamas and at the same time kill one of the leaders with whom you are negotiating. It puts a certain strain on the willingness of the other party to negotiate.
Don't want a truce
The impression is purely that Netanyahu is doing everything he can to ensure that there is no truce. A truce effectively means an end to the war, and thus likely also that Netanyahu must leave power. After all, it was under his leadership that Hamas managed to carry out what he himself describes as the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Hamas of course mourns its leader, but at the same time hopes that Haniya's death can finally persuade Iran to directly enter the war on Hamas's side.
Just as it is hoped that the deadly missile against Fuad Shukr will cause Hezbollah to launch a major offensive against Israel.
But if you listen to what the parties say, nobody wants a major war. Hamas claims it wants a ceasefire that ends the war. Hezbollah and Iran as well.
Even Netanyahu claims that he wants to avoid the Gaza conflict developing into a major regional war.
But he, like the leaders of Iran and its many proxy groups such as Hezbollah, is acting in practice in a way that constantly increases the risk of an escalation. Everything according to the motto that what "we" do is righteous, while the actions of the opposing side constitute war crimes.
Higher oil price
In Sweden, we may think that the Middle East is far away, but what happens there affects our own lives to the greatest extent. A major war in the region increases the risk of terrorist acts in Sweden.
It affects our economy. Oil prices, which have been on the decline recently, have risen sharply since the attack that killed the Hamas leader. In the event of a major war, it would soar even more, which would hit Swedish consumers and Swedish industry.
It is in everyone's interest that the spiral of revenge in the Middle East comes to an end and is replaced by diplomatic efforts to resolve the Palestinian conflict once and for all.
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