“‘You will pursue your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword.’ – Leviticus 26 Our enemies cannot hide. We will pursue and eliminate them.”
The post contained pictures of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in Beirut last month and former Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who was killed in August, with a blank space for a third picture between them. All three were crossed out in red.
Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1200 people – mainly civilians, according to Israeli tallies – has been on Israel’s wanted list ever since.
The attacks marked the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded by launching a massive offensive on Hamas-run Gaza, killing more than 42,400 people and displacing most of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million people, according to Gaza health authorities.
Sinwar, who made his name by punishing Palestinian collaborators with Israel, has so far eluded detection, possibly hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza over the past two decades.
Previously leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, he was named as its overall leader following the assassination of former political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
War on several fronts
The war in Gaza shows no sign of easing as Israel carries out relentless airstrikes and ground operations to try and reach Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas.
In northern Gaza on Thursday, Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians including children at a school in the Jabalia camp that is sheltering displaced people, a Gaza health ministry official told Reuters.
Israel’s military said dozens of militants were at the site and it conducted a precise strike on a meeting point for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group inside the compound. Hamas denied it used the school.
Israel also launched a ground and air campaign in Lebanon at the start of the month to dismantle Hezbollah after a year during which the Iran-backed militant group fired across the border in support of Hamas in Gaza. Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes hundreds of women and children.
Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed over the same period, according to Israel.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, on a visit to northern Israel near the border, said Israel would not halt its assault on Hezbollah to allow negotiations.
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“We will hold negotiations only under fire. I said this on day one, I said it in Gaza and I am saying it here,” he said according to a statement from his office.
As well as Hezbollah, Iran-backed groups including Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq have carried out attacks in the Middle East in support of Hamas.
The US said on Wednesday it struck five underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the latest in a series of US attacks on Houthi-linked targets.
Reuters
