Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by a group of Israeli trainee soldiers in Tal as-Sultan, Rafah, last month. It was a fateful and unexpected encounter.
Sinwar’s bloody legacy, which left over 1,000 Israeli civilians dead, has inflicted even greater devastation on his own people in Gaza. Over 44,000 Gazans have died as a consequence of the cycle of violence he perpetuated, with thousands more enduring the grief and hardship left in its wake.
What crossed his mind as he orchestrated the deadly Oct. 7 attack? Given his years studying Israeli security tactics, surely he anticipated Israel’s overwhelming retaliation. Perhaps he assumed Israel would pull back after killing a few thousand innocents, justifying the loss as “inevitable collateral damage.” Or perhaps Sinwar overestimated the “success” of the massacre, much as al Qaeda did before 9/11. This time, though, a likely retaliatory strike would directly target Hamas strongholds.
With his experience, Sinwar must have anticipated this level of response. Yet he seems to have disregarded the suffering and sacrifice of his people, viewing them as expendable as long as Hamas achieved its aims. In the end, Sinwar may have not anticipated his own death, as it often is with leaders who view others as mere pawns. Justice, though, found him in the end.
But what about his counterpart across the border? When does Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reckoning come?
Netanyahu’s policies toward Gaza reflect his longstanding commitment to blocking a two-state solution, a goal for which he was willing to forge deals with extremists. He allowed Qatari funds to flow directly to Hamas, bolstering the group’s financial and operational resources. As the New York Times reported, “For years, Israeli intelligence officers even escorted a Qatari official into Gaza, where he doled out money from suitcases filled with millions of dollars.” These are calculated moves, yet Netanyahu’s motives reveal a politician placing his own political survival above Israel’s stability.
Netanyahu has been facing charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery — allegations that have cast a dark shadow over his time in office. The sole barrier between him and a jail sentence is his position as prime minister. With his political future tied to a controversial judicial overhaul, Netanyahu’s attempt to insulate himself from prosecution has further divided his country. His strategy, which prioritizes self-preservation over national security, has rendered Israel vulnerable at a critical juncture.
This fixation on power, paired with his overconfidence in Israel’s military prowess, led Netanyahu to overlook the vulnerabilities in his nation’s defenses. Israel’s devastating failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack was partly due to Netanyahu’s blindness to the warning signs. By leaving his citizens defenseless, he has caused immeasurable suffering and loss.
When Israel’s intelligence services failed, Netanyahu’s initial response was a shameful deflection of responsibility. Rather than accepting his government’s accountability, he delayed any investigations that could expose the security breaches behind this tragedy.
Netanyahu’s response to the massacre did find some initial global support, with world leaders backing Israel’s right to defend itself. But they also understood, implicitly, the tragic reality: Given Hamas’s embedded operations within Gaza’s densely populated urban areas, significant civilian deaths would be inevitable. By December, the Israeli military had killed over 14,000 Palestinians, with almost half of them children — a staggering 12-to-1 ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths. That ratio has now swelled to an unconscionable 37-to-1.
Netanyahu, though not directly pulling the trigger, has played a pivotal role in this escalation. As leader of a democratic nation, he is culpable for the security lapses that left Israel exposed to a deadly incursion. Israel’s judicial system is capable of, and obligated to, hold him accountable for the decisions that prioritized his personal and political survival over his duty to protect Israeli lives.
But Netanyahu’s campaign has also had brutal consequences beyond Israel’s borders. As part of a wider regional offensive, he has escalated attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, indiscriminately targeting communication devices like pagers and walkie-talkies. Such attacks reveal a troubling disregard for civilian lives. Two young children were killed, and multiple civilians injured, because of these scattershot tactics.
Sinwar led a terrorist organization and met a predictable fate on the battlefield. Netanyahu, however, is a democratically elected national leader whose actions reveal a profound betrayal of the trust placed in him by the Israeli people. As Israel grapples with this violent conflict, Netanyahu’s leadership has come under well-deserved scrutiny for his failure to protect his people and for his role in the tragic collateral damage inflicted upon innocents in Gaza and Lebanon.
There are no sympathetic characters here. Sinwar wielded terror without remorse, using his own people as sacrificial pawns. Netanyahu has not shown the moral authority expected of a leader tasked with defending a democratic nation. His own agenda, tied to survival rather than to justice, has cost both Israeli and Palestinian lives.
Justice found Sinwar. But Netanyahu’s accountability is long overdue. If Israel’s democracy is to hold true, he must face the consequences of his actions. As the leader of a nation with a robust judicial system, Netanyahu deserves a fair trial.
I wish him a long life — not in office, but in an Israeli prison, where he may come to reckon with the suffering he has wrought upon his own people and those across the border.
Mahyar Amouzegar is provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at the University of New Orleans and a writer. He formerly was a senior analyst at RAND Corporation, researching military policy issues. His latest novel is “The Hubris of an Empty Hand.”
