Israeli air strikes probably killed Hamas’s Gaza chief last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, as he vowed that his ground offensive would continue until the country controlled all of the enclave.
The Israeli air force targeted Mohammad Sinwar last week at the European Hospital in southern Gaza in a series of strikes.
Speaking about the renewed offensive in the shattered Palestinian enclave, nicknamed “Gideon’s Chariot”, Netanyahu said: “We eliminated tens of thousands of [Hamas] terrorists [since October 7 2023]. It appears we also eliminated Mohammad Sinwar.”
In his first press conference in six months, Netanyahu also brushed off European condemnation of the offensive as the result of propaganda pushed by Muslim minorities on the continent.
“These are the same countries that told us, end the war beforehand . . . we did not listen to them. These countries are under pressure by the Muslim minority there, under pressure from public opinion that exhorts Hamas propaganda.”
He was speaking hours after Israeli soldiers fired towards a large delegation of European and other diplomats in Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank.
The diplomats, travelling with a clearly visible crew of journalists, were seen in videos ducking to avoid live bullets and running to their cars as Israeli troops fired from the other side of a nearby checkpoint.
The Israel Defense Forces said the diplomats had veered from a preapproved path and the soldiers were firing warning shots. “The IDF regrets the inconvenience caused,” it said.
The UK, France and Canada on Tuesday threatened targeted sanctions if Israel did not stop the offensive and allow substantial humanitarian assistance into Gaza, the first time in recent memory Israel’s closest allies have displayed such public disapproval with its conduct of the war.
Since then, the UK has imposed sanctions on a prominent rightwing settler, Daniella Weiss, and settler groups. But it has stopped short of taking any action against Israeli officials, including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has repeatedly bragged about destroying Gaza and threatened the expulsion of its Palestinian population.
“This is a ‘mark of shame’ that Britain, instead of applying sanctions on Hamas, applies sanctions on [Weiss], that day to day is threatened by Hamas,” said Netanyahu.
Netanyahu acknowledged that he was only allowing very small amounts of food into Gaza in order to stave off international condemnation of Israel’s nearly three-month siege of the enclave. “To ensure our good friends support us, a humanitarian crisis must be prevented.”
Since Monday, Israel has allowed less than 250 trucks of food to enter — the first consignments in 79 days. But the UN had been unable to drive most of them to its warehouses for distribution because of the fighting and widespread lawlessness, an official said.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were already starving, a UN panel said last week, and the entire Gaza Strip is on the verge of famine.
Sinwar took over the reins of the militant group in Gaza after Israel killed his brother Yahya, the longtime Hamas leader who orchestrated the October 7 2023 cross-border raids. Hamas has not confirmed Sinwar’s death, and no successor has been announced.
Sinwar’s other brother, a professor at a local university, was also killed around the same time by an Israeli air strike, according to a death notice shared in Gaza.
Since then, Israel has pummelled Gaza with hundreds of air strikes and killed more than 500 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Ground troops are manoeuvring inside Gaza, the IDF has said, while tanks are massed on the border and evacuation orders have been issued for much of northern Gaza and the ruins of Khan Younis, once Gaza’s second-largest city.
But the full extent of the offensive remains unclear, even as negotiations in Doha to end the war and secure the freedom of an estimated 20 Israeli hostages and the bodies of 38 more have made little progress.
Nearly 54,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, most of them women and children, according to local health officials.
At least 1,200 people were killed in Israel in Hamas’s attack on October 7 2023 and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
